The leader of the Polish opposition, Donald Tusk, took to social media over the weekend to comment on the recent mass riots in France. He said that the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and its leader Jarosław Kaczyński were guilty of policies leading to migrants being brought in from countries such as Saudi Arabia, India, Iran, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Nigeria. He added that the ruling conservatives had last year imported 130,000 migrants from such countries, which is 50 times more than in 2015 when Tusk was last in power.
Tusk commented that Kaczyński imported migrants to arouse a fear of them for electoral purposes and that the best thing that could happen would be for Kaczyński to be removed from office so that Poles could regain control over their own state and borders.
In response, Jarosław Kaczyński told a meeting in central Poland that Donald Tusk seems to have had a total change of heart in one night and become fundamentally opposed to migration into Poland.
He recalled that Tusk was the politician who had chastised Poland for its opposition to the European Commission’s policy of relocating migrants in 2015 and threatened that Poland would be sanctioned. He also opposed the building of a barrier on the border with Belarus, claiming that the illegal migrants coming from Belarus were victims and that it was immoral to block them.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also criticized Tusk for his remarks, calling Tusk “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” He pointed to all the liberal MPs who had campaigned for Poland to open its borders and added that Tusk would agree to the migration pact if he became prime minister.
