Poland Sneezed Too
On October 30, 2026, the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk of the Civic Coalition Party, sent police officers into and surrounding the Polish Constitutional Tribunal building after a judge in the tribunal, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, suspended the President and Vice President of the tribunal, Bogdan Roman Święczkowski and Bartłomiej Sochański, respectively.[1]
Obviously, his opposition is calling it illegal.
President Nawrocki of the Law and Justice (PiS) party was in a flight to Senegal and turned around. He came back to speak to tribunal judge Korwin-Piotrowska at the tribunal. There have been protests in Warsaw.[2]
The judicial battle started because President Nawrocki had not sworn in 5 out of 8 judges that had been voted in by the Prime Minister’s political coalition in the Polish legislature, and Święczkowski had not recognized them as judges either, including Anna Korwin-Piotrowska. The dispute is over whether or not judges that had been elected were judges if they had not been sworn in by the President. The question is the legality of the President effectively vetoing the election of judges.
According to Daniel tilles, writing at Notes from Poland,[3]
“So far this year, parliament has chosen eight new judges, meaning that its nominees in theory now have a majority on the court.
However, under Polish law, although new TK judges are chosen by parliament, they must swear an oath ‘before the president’. Nawrocki, who is aligned with PiS, has refused to swear in five of those eight new judges, including Korwin-Piotrowska, Markiewicz and Berek.
Those five judges arranged their own swearing-in ceremonies in parliament and submitted their oaths to the president’s office. However, Święczkowski, who before being appointed as a TK judge had served in the former PiS government, refused to accept those five judges on the court.”
TK is the abbreviation for the Constitutional Tribunal in Polish, Trybunał Konstytucyjny.
The fear is that Prime Minister Tusk wants the Constitutional Tribunal to replace the Polish currency- the zloty- with the Euro, move Poland’s gold to Germany, and also open the borders, according to Poland’s representative member in the European Union’s Parliament, MEP Dominik Tarczyński.
So far, the protests have not turned into rioting or looting, though the police action is being described at an attempted coup de état.
[1]https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/world/4786243/karol-nawrocki-poland-coup-d-etat-donald-tusk/
