In Poland, an Assault on the Courts Provokes Outrage
Law and Justice, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said, has “stood on the side of the people,
and nobody will make us turn back from this way — not even by shouting here and stamping your feet!”
To become law, a bill must have three readings in the Sejm, the lower house of Parliament, then be passed by the Senate and signed by the president.
“Collectively, they would abolish any remaining judicial independence and put the judiciary under full political control of the government.”
The drive to control the courts comes barely two weeks after President Trump paid a triumphant visit to Warsaw
and praised the populist and nationalist Law and Justice Party, which controls the government.
A second bill, introduced late last week, would force all current members of the Supreme Court to resign, including several who have been feuding with the government,
and replace them with judges selected by the governing party’s minister of justice.
“You could have been reformers of the Polish judiciary,” an enraged Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, from
the opposition Peasants Party, said to stone-faced lawmakers from the Law and Justice Party.
One proposed law, already approved by Parliament and awaiting President Andrzej Duda’s signature, would reconfigure the National Council of the Judiciary, which chooses those eligible to become judges, so
that government-appointed members would essentially have veto power.
Since Law and Justice has only a slim majority in the Sejm, this would force the governing party to find at least one other party to vote with it.