Former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s team and their media can offer up a million excuses, but they cannot change the past. The facts are clear: From 2007 to 2015, Poland had a government that compromised security by pursuing full cooperation with Moscow in almost every area, from foreign policy to energy.
Adding to this reality is the humiliation during the Smolensk tragedy, i.e., the absurd rejection of the Russian assassination theory. Whether the Tusk government did this due to orders from Berlin, in hopes of boosting their personal careers, or out of sheer stupidity — basically doing the opposite of everything Law and Justice (PiS) did — is only a secondary concern.
What matters is that they chose to play a game that no Polish politician should ever choose.
Such political crimes must have consequences. People who commit such grave errors should at least leave politics. If they made such a fundamental mistake, they have no right to even think about taking control again.
The commission for investigating Russian influence from 2007 to 2022, supported by Polish President Andrzej Duda on Monday, must reveal the truth. Poles have the right to know how much their country’s basic interests were trampled upon during the rule of the Civic Platform (PO) and how vastly different the independence policy of Law and Justice has been.
This is a fundamental matter for Polish security. Such serious culpability cannot be ignored. Poles no longer live in the First Republic but the Third or Fourth, and they cannot afford to make the same mistakes that once led them to downfall.
