Judge Zbigniew Kapiński, president of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, was asked on Polsat News about the government’s plan to repair the justice system, whereby judges appointed by the National Council of the Judiciary after 2018 would have to submit an “open regret” to be allowed to continue adjudicating.
“I can say it unequivocally: I will not submit (to such a demand),” he said, adding that this would be equivalent to him losing his independence as a judge, reports Wydarzenia.
“This is absolutely not restoring the rule of law. It is degrading,” said Kapiński.
“This demands that I identify with a specific authority. (…) This reminds me of the methods of the secret police,” he said, referring to his experience gained while working in lustration courts, which served to curtail the participation of former communists, including informants of the communist secret police after the fall of communism. At that time, if you wanted to “break someone,” you “signed a loyalty oath,” he explained.
Judge Kapiński was also asked about last year’s ruling by the CJEU regarding Poland’s Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs of the Supreme Court, a body created by the nationalist, right-wing PiS party. The EU’s top court said it did not constitute an independent tribunal.
More at issue was the manner in which judges had been appointed to this chamber by PiS.
“Due to circumstances relating to the appointment of the judges of the Extraordinary Control and Judicial Chamber of the Polish Supreme Court, the formation of that Chamber is not a ‘court’ within the meaning of EU law,” the CJEU had stated at the time, indicating that it thus would not examine any questions referred to it by this body.
In response, Kapiński said that the CJEU “has spoken in specific judgments concerning specific judges, but there is no judgment of the European courts that would directly refer to all judges.”
On yet another front, scientists, media representatives, and ordinary Poles have all come out in defense of the AI center IDEAS NCBR concerning personnel changes that were humiliating for employees. The government has been busy installing government-friendly parties, resulting in no PiS supporters being allowed to continue working there.
The search for a new director was also preceded by a change in part of the company’s supervisory board the day before the recruitment was announced, with the new director being someone who heads a department at the same university as the newly admitted member of the supervisory board, reports wPolityce.
Similar moves have been seen at the Central Information Technology Centre and the GovTech Centre, among others, leaving employees enraged, as neither scientific achievements nor recognition from the community seems to counts, but only political appointments “from above.”
