2024-01-08 17:12 update: 2024-01-10, 21:24
Andrzej Duda. Photo PAP/Leszek Szymański
The Polish president, Andrzej Duda told the lower house speaker on Monday that his pardon of former Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA) head Mariusz Kaminski and his deputy Maciej Wasik remains in place and that their parliamentary mandates must also be respected.
On Monday Duda invited Szymon Holownia, the speaker of the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, to discuss the issue of his presidential pardon offered to Kaminski and Wasik in 2015, which the current ruling coalition says was ineffective as the pardon was granted when the verdict was not final and the defendants still had the right to appeal.
Recently, Holownia stripped both politicians, prominent figures in the former ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), of their parliamentary mandates.
After the meeting Duda drew attention to the difficult and tense situation surrounding the case of Kaminski and Wasik and pointed out that it's even complicated for those who understand it, let alone ordinary people.
The president said that in 2015 he applied the law of pardon to four people, including Kaminski and Wasik, who were then non-finally convicted by the court of first instance. According to him, the pardon was an exercise of the presidential constitutional prerogative.
The pardon, Duda said, was then questioned "by several judges of the Supreme Court", which resulted in "an avalanche of various types of judgments". "This has led to a terrible legal complication, which has now moved to the issue of the expiry or non-expiration of the mandates of the MPs," said the president.
"My position is clear: the presidential prerogative was effectively exercised in 2015, all four men were effectively pardoned by the President of the Republic of Poland. This closed the case definitively. Therefore, I have no doubt that today the gentlemen have the parliamentary mandates that were given to them by citizens in the last elections and they have the right to exercise these mandates. They are part of the legislative body of the state, which is the Sejm," Duda said.
"I communicated this to the speaker, and at the same time I proposed to that - in order to close this case, avoid state, social and political unrest and further accumulation of controversies, to recognise today that the pardon of 2015 was and is effective," the president added.
In response to the president's analysis of the situation, Holownia said that "as to the merits, we stand by our positions," and added that "the president maintains his deepest belief that Wasik and Kaminski have been pardoned in a fully valid and effective manner. However, I am of the opinion that the judgment of the district court in this case is clear and entails appropriate consequences."
The former head of the CBA (Central Anti-Corruption Bureau), and former Interior Minister, Mariusz Kaminski and his former deputy Maciej Wasik were sentenced on December 20, 2023, to two years in prison by a court of second instance after masterminding an anti-corruption provocation in 2007. The latest verdict is final. Therefore, the Sejm Speaker, Szymon Holownia, issued decisions to declare the expiry of their parliamentary mandates. On Friday, the head of the Chancellery of the Sejm issued an order to annul the parliamentary cards of Kaminski and Wasik. (PAP)
mf/jd
