'Absolutely no legal basis' for chaotic scenes in Poland's top court, says Polish secretary of state

Now we want to hear from the other side of the issue, and to do this, Polish Secretary of State and advisor to President Nawrocki, Marcin Pszczedacz, joins us now. Good morning to you. Good morning, very good morning. Hello, sir. So, the government says it is trying to restore the tribunal's independence after years of political interference. President Nawrocki says the government is trying to take control of the court. Which side is defending the constitution? Definitely restoring any kind of rule of law which the government claims should not be done by the 3,000 riot police entering the premises of the Constitutional Tribunal. And that is what happened in the evening of Friday when people in Poland were heading towards their families out of Warsaw for the All Saints' Day. It was a very quiet, in the capital of Poland, evening, the president was on his way to Senegal, and suddenly we learned that Prime Minister Tusk sent 3,000 riot police troops in order to, as they say, clean the Constitutional Tribunal, without any legal basis for that. Of course there is a crisis, of course there is a dispute over that, But even the lawyers who are very close to the liberal government says that there is absolutely no legal basis for such a behavior of the government. What's more, the president of the Supreme Court and the president of the National Administrative Court, so the two most important judges in Poland, they also said publicly that there is absolutely no legitimate basis for such a behavior of the government. So that's why we are in such a crisis now in Poland. Sir, I mean, we all saw the scenes where President Noworodzki entered the building, the tribunal building. Critics described the visit as a PR stunt to exert pressure on the court. Why did the president decide to intervene in person and what exactly was he trying to achieve? Well, according to the Polish constitution, president of the Republic of Poland is the guard of the constitution. So whenever he sees that the constitution is violated, he is obliged to react. But before going to the tribunal, he went to his own palace, invited the president of the Supreme Court in order to learn his perspective, in order to learn an expertise on that. What's going on and how should he treat it? That president is the head of state with a very strong, strong. Thank you. He's a legitimized leader. I mean, with a very strong mandate, more than 10 million people voted directly for him. But he wanted to learn the perspective of the of the legal perspective after learning that it's all illegal. He went there in order to first learn. On the basis of what's going on there, the second, to help the legitimate president and the deputy president of the tribunal enter the building in order to restore the order. Unfortunately, he was blocked by those appointees of Prime Minister Tusk who are claiming that they are judges. But as Prime Minister Tusk publicly said, these are his judges. So the Prime Minister Tusk says, these are my judges. We believe that there shouldn't be any my, his or their judges. There should be legitimate legal judges, not Tusk's judges. OK, so are President Navrotsky and Prime Minister Tusk now effectively fighting a constitutional war? Well, as I said, there is a constitutional crisis, definitely, and the people of Poland gathered in front of the tribunal protesting against that kind of situation, mostly protesting, of course, against the entrance of police. There is evidence that there is a crisis. What President Nawrocki said and did after that, he invited all the political parties to the palace In order to talk, because we believe that in democracy, it is the dialogue which may solve the crisis. The problem is that Prime Minister Tusk was not eager to really talk. He just issued his statement through the public television saying that he will not step back from that and he will only keep the police there in the constitutional tribunal. So all the other parties are very much eager to talk and to consult and there is one main message coming from all the It cannot be like this. There is a need for any kind of restart of a situation. So we do believe that based on that, we will build something positive. All right, Polish Secretary of State and Presidential Advisor Marcin Przedaś. Thank you very much this morning.