Physical confrontation at the entrance
President Karol Nawrocki pushed his way into the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw shortly after midnight on Saturday. I find this direct physical confrontation during a rule-of-law tussle between the PiS-allied president and Prime Minister Donald Tusk to be a blatant escalation. A video published overnight shows Nawrocki pushing through people gathered at the court’s entrance. One of those people was Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, the judge whose disputed nomination as the court’s acting president triggered the crisis on Friday. Judge Maciej Berek accused the president of physically confronting Korwin-Piotrowska during the incident. Presidential aide Rafal Leskiewicz disputed this by claiming the judges, whom he called "usurpers," obstructed and manhandled Nawrocki. Inside the tribunal, Nawrocki told Korwin-Piotrowska and other judges recently elected by Tusk’s parliamentary majority, "You are not judges [of the Tribunal]."
Judicial power struggle intensifies
The confrontation marks a dramatic struggle over how to reverse judicial changes introduced under the former nationalist Law and Justice government. Korwin-Piotrowska suspended court president Bogdan Swieczkowski and his deputy Bartlomiej Sochanski, both of whom were named by PiS and seen as loyalists, after claiming authority to take over the court’s management. Swieczkowski rejected the move. Nawrocki accused the government of "forcibly seizing a constitutional institution" in a statement issued around 5 a.m., while simultaneously demanding that police leave the court grounds and summoning emergency consultations with parliamentary parties for Saturday. He cited a "threat to Poland’s internal security" to justify these emergency consultations. Police remain deployed outside the tribunal, where PiS supporters have staged an anti-government protest camp for weeks. I find the ongoing presence of these protesters at the court’s entrance to be an unnecessary distraction.
Tusk’s efforts to reverse controversial moves by former PiS governments to fill the court with judges aligned with the nationalist party created this broader dispute. PiS and Nawrocki resisted these efforts by refusing to swear in certain judges elected by the Tusk-led parliamentary majority. Those judges subsequently took oaths in parliament, in a ceremony Nawrocki considers null and void, while Swieczkowski barred them from hearing cases. I find the ongoing struggle between the PiS-allied president and the Tusk-led parliamentary majority to be an escalating confrontation.
