The coup against public media in Poland: Where’s President Duda when Tusk is destroying democracy and the rule of law?

Poland's president Andrzej Duda.
By Grzegorz Adamczyk
2 Min Read

The new Polish PM Donald Tusk and his hitman culture minister, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, have trampled on the constitution and the rule of law, flushing them down the toilet.

Sienkiewicz, who was an officer in the intelligence services, has misled the public by saying that the commercial code was enough for him to dismiss the CEOs of public media, whereas public media actually operate on the basis of special legislation, and their managing bodies are chosen by the National Media Council.

The law in Poland stipulates clearly how public media is managed and does not allow governments to arbitrarily dismiss the management of public media. 

However, at the time when public media were being taken over, President Andrzej Duda was chairing a meeting of the National Security Council in which Tusk and others responsible for this coup were taking part. Duda should have demanded Tusk stop these actions at once and suspended the meeting. 

As head of state, Duda has the right to ask the constitutional court to outlaw political parties that break the constitution. Since they all backed today’s coup against public media, this is something that he should have at least considered. 

If a political party chooses to participate in a coup against the constitution, it should be made illegal. We cannot count on EU institutions to do anything about it, as they support Tusk as they once supported Putin. 

The new government did not even try to change the law in order to change the management of public media. This means they willfully broke the law and the constitution. It is the president’s job to bring them to justice and to stop the coup, even if it means that the instigators of it be sent to prison. 

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