On Friday, the website of the Constitutional Tribunal published information about the break in the activities of the President of the Constitutional Tribunal, Bogdan Święczkowski, and the Vice-President, Bartłomiej Sochański. The work of the Tribunal was managed by judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, elected by the current Sejm.
President Karol Nawrocki, who was on his way to Senegal at the time, interrupted his journey and appeared at the Tribunal's headquarters on the night from Friday to Saturday.
Recordings have appeared on social media documenting the president's entry into the building and a stormy exchange of opinions between his representatives and judges appointed by the current Sejm. The parties present different versions of events regarding the course of the incident.
In an interview with Radio Wnet, the president's spokesman said that during the events at the Constitutional Tribunal on the night from Friday to Saturday, there was a violation of the president's inviolability by Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, who heads the Constitutional Tribunal, and Maciej Berek and Krystian Markiewicz, elected by the Sejm as judges of the Constitutional Tribunal.
In turn, according to Anna Korwin-Piotrowska's account, the president allegedly tried to enter the building by force. With confidence and momentum, he tried to ram me from the front and the entire group of judges with whom we were standing together in front of the entrance to the Tribunal, Korwin-Piotrowska reported in an interview with TVN24.
Ultimately, the president left the Constitutional Tribunal headquarters at around 5 a.m.
"He decided to step in"
Today in the Sejm, Marshal Włodzimierz Czarzasty commented on these events. According to him, Nawrocki, whom he called the "patron of the brown coalition", did "what he can do."
He decided to walk in, push through, use physical force against the woman and shout in the corridor. Ultimately, however, he sat in the Tribunal with his colleagues at night and left. It turned out to be ineffective. It turned out to be ineffective once again, Czarzasty emphasized.
He noted that "decisive actions to remedy the situation in the Constitutional Tribunal were necessary to end the state of lawlessness" and that, according to the constitution, each of the authorities - executive, legislative, judicial - "has its own competences and guarantees of independence."
Just as judges of the Constitutional Tribunal cannot enter the Presidential Palace at their own discretion, representatives of the executive power, including the president, have no right to force entry to the seat of the Tribunal and then sit there until five in the morning in the company of their political servants, added the Marshal of the Sejm.
"You don't negotiate with an aggressor"
As he added, "you don't negotiate with an aggressor, especially a helpless aggressor, even if he is a boxer."
As the Marshal of the Sejm, the representative body of the nation, I expect that the decisions of the Sejm will be respected and implemented. The Sejm has elected eight Constitutional Tribunal judges in recent months, and it is the duty of the state and its institutions to provide them with conditions to approach and perform their duties, Czarzasty said.
He emphasized that "legally elected judges have an obligation to start adjudicating and restore normality in the Constitutional Tribunal."
He added that over the last three years, actions have been taken to restore the normal functioning of the Constitutional Tribunal. But PiS cemented the Tribunal with provisions that made effective reform impossible, and the president, by refusing to take the oath of office from judges elected by the Sejm, deepened this paralysis. In a word, we did not have a Tribunal, we had a politically corrupt annex - said Czarzasty.
"Hands off, Mr. President, from the Constitutional Tribunal"
During Monday's press conference in the Sejm, Czarzasty stated that the only way to resolve the dispute over the Constitutional Tribunal is not "a reset, changing the constitution, or praising those who break the law" but "for President Karol Nawrocki to accept an official oath from the judges of the Constitutional Tribunal."
According to Czarzasty, the government's side "is a fight for democracy" that "citizens expected from the people who won three years ago." They expected effectiveness, just as they now expect from judges elected in accordance with the law - effectiveness and independence - added Czarzasty.
Hands off, Mr. President, from the Constitutional Tribunal. Hands off, Mr. Braun, Mr. Kaczyński, Mr. Morawiecki, Mr. Bosak from the Constitutional Tribunal. Hands off - emphasized the marshal.
