The "Coup" In Poland

Riot police surrounded Poland's Supreme Court while the president was away. Are we witnessing a coup? Welcome to America Uncovered, I'm Chris Chappell. You know, why do I even bother doing this show? After all, nothing ever happens. What's that, Shelley? I regret to inform you that something has happened! Last Friday night in Poland, riot police suddenly surrounded the country's top court, the Constitutional Tribunal, basically Poland's Supreme Court, while the president was out of the country on a flight to Senegal. Rumors of a coup spread fast. President Karol Narowski even turned his plane around mid-flight. Heck, even the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Tribunal was with a group seen literally trying to cut their way through as police barricaded the entrance. What is happening right now in Poland will have dire consequences, not just for Poland, but for Europe and Western democracies as a whole. Because not everyone was calling it a coup. The Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, who sounds like a bizarro world version of Donald Trump, Said the police were restoring the rule of law and that sometimes it requires decisive action. Well, that certainly describes using riot police to literally lock out the court's chief justice. So what on earth is happening? Well, a quick scorecard for those of you who don't follow Polish politics. Tusk is Poland's prime minister, the leader of the pro-EU, liberal-left governing coalition. That includes Tusk's own party, the Civic Coalition. Duda is Poland's president. This is where it gets confusing for American listeners. Poland's president isn't in charge of the government. He doesn't have much executive power. But the president can do things like veto laws passed by parliament. Duda is also considered a close ally of US President Donald Trump, and is backed by Poland's pro-church National Conservative PiS party. It literally means Law and Justice. It doesn't get much clearer than that. Well, except for that one Polish political party that just means the Left. You know, maybe in some ways, Polish politics isn't that complicated. Anyway, the PIS are not a fan of Brussels. So I think you can get a sense for the political dynamics going on here. Back to what happened over the weekend. Was it a coup? Well, it depends on who you ask. If you ask Tusk and Brussels, they were just restoring the rule of law. If you ask the PIS, it was a coup. So let me tell you exactly what happened and you can decide. See, Tusk and his coalition were elected in 2023, and his goal was to bring Poland closer to the EU and undo a bunch of PIS policies from when they were in charge of the government. But since Tusk had to deal with a PIS-backed president, he frequently got stonewalled. Actually, Duda vetoed more laws than any president in Polish history, and he did it in under a year. Just to be clear, he didn't veto everything. As of this summer, out of 267 bills sent to him, he only vetoed 37. But Tusk was not pleased. And here's the thing. Poland has a parliamentary election coming up next year. On paper, Tusk's party looks fine. It leads PIS in basically every poll. But Tusk doesn't govern alone. He needs coalition partners. And they are struggling in the polls. Meanwhile, the right's support is consolidating. PIS plus two even further right parties. In other words, the liberal left camp's coalition is unstable, Well, the right is is getting bigger and further right. So even though Tusk's party leads the polls, they appear unlikely to retain power. One October projection has those three right-wing parties winning a comfortable majority. So a PiS-controlled parliament and president. What's a guy to do? Well, We just saw what. The Constitutional Tribunal, again Poland's version of the Supreme Court, is made up of 15 judges. Or at least it's supposed to. I'll come back to that one in a bit. On Friday evening, a judge in Warsaw announced she was suspending the Chief Justice and putting herself in charge. No wonder he tried to saw his way back in. The court's official ex-account didn't mince words. They said that judge is not a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal. And all persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d'etat. Now, when I put it that way, it sounds really bad for Tusk. He sees the writing on the wall. If the right wins next year, the one thing that could block them is the same thing that's been blocking him for three years— the Constitutional Tribunal. Control the court now, and you can control what the next government can do. But here's where things get messy. It's Parliament's job to elect judges to the Constitutional Tribunal. A judge serves a nine-year term and can't be re-elected. And by September, eight seats were open. That's eight seats that Tusk and his Parliament gets to fill. But the President was just like, nah, and flat-out refused to swear in five of them, including one Tusk calls his right-hand man, and the judge that started this whole mess. The president argued that if he doesn't swear them in, they don't get the position. Is that legal? Well, it depends on who you ask. Polish legislation states that a person elected to assume the office of a judge of the tribunal shall take the following oath in the presence of the President of the Republic of Poland, and a judge of the tribunal shall commence his or her employment relationship after taking the oath of office. What if the president just doesn't give them the chance to take that oath? That would mean essentially that the Polish president gets a veto power over tribunal judges by deciding whether or not to swear them in. The law doesn't specifically give the president that veto, so this read might require, oh I don't know, the constitutional tribunal to make a ruling interpreting the constitution that way. And guess what? Back in May, the PIS-led tribunal did just that. Europe really didn't like that. Earlier this month, the Venice Commission ruled that the tribunal couldn't do that. Aw, you mean unelected bureaucrats in Europe are unhappy they don't get to control the government of Poland? So sad. Based on the Constitutional Tribunal's ruling, Naroski had every right to block those five judges. Now, that ruling is a gamble for the PIS, because it means that if anyone from Tusk's party ever became president, they could do the same thing to judges elected by a PIS-controlled parliament. Granted, that ruling only happened because they stacked the court, but hey, that's how the game is played. The PIS was in a position to elect its people to the tribunal, and they made a ruling fair and square, right? Oh Well, it gets more messy. Let's go back to 2015. Tusk was Poland's Prime Minister from 2007 to 2014, leading a civic platform government. By the way, after that, he became the President of the European Council in Brussels. This guy really is the EU's man. But back in 2015, Tusk's party, the Civic Platform, was about to lose power to the PIS. So on its way out the door, its parliament elected five new judges to the tribunal, including two for seats that weren't even open yet. That's pretty sketchy. They only had the right to replace three seats, and they were trying to stack the court before the PIS took power. Well, guess what the PIS did? Instead of just replacing those two, it threw out all five and installed its own picks. The new PIS president swore four of them in in the middle of the night, hours before the tribunal had a chance to rule on the whole mess. And when the tribunal did rule, it said Civic Platform was entitled to three of its five picks. And the PIS-controlled government? Just ignored the ruling. That means three of the PIS's judges were sitting in seats that were already lawfully filled. Over the next eight years, the entire court filled up with PIS appointees. Now, you can make a strong argument that three of those seats really should have belonged to the people the Civic Platform elected. In fact, in 2021, the European Court of Human Rights ruled the court was not a tribunal established by law. But who cares about Europe's strongly worded letters from bureaucrats? They're not in charge of Poland. After all, other than those three seats, all the others were completely legally filled by the PIS. But because of Europe's ruling, and the fact that it didn't work out for them, when Tusk became prime minister again in late 2023, his government simply stopped recognizing the tribunal. It ignored every ruling by the court, especially the one where it said the president could veto Tusk's picks for judges. And last year, the EU's top court ruled that the tribunal wasn't a legitimate court at all. Do you get that the EU really doesn't like the PIS? And so that's why on Friday, the riot police were sent in to take control of the tribunal and force in Tusk's five judges in addition to purging the Chief Justice. Now, the EU thinks this is brilliant. No, they don't see the hypocrisy. Because across Europe, the right is surging. In the 2024 European Parliament elections, the Liberals and Greens got hammered, and right-wing groups surged past them. In national elections, parties labeled far-right are growing in popularity. The trend is clear, and Brussels is not thrilled about it. Conservatives across Europe have a common complaint. Voters say one thing, and judges and bureaucrats get the final word. But here's the irony in Poland. That's exactly what Tusk has been complaining about since 2023. Polish voters elected his coalition. And a court, packed by the last government, plus a president from the other side, have been saying no ever since. The same thing is happening right here in the US. From 1955 to 1995, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives for 40 straight years. They held the Senate for most of that time, too. That meant Republican presidents couldn't just pick whoever they wanted for the Supreme Court. Case in point, in 1987, Reagan nominated conservative legal scholar Robert Bork. The Democratic Senate rejected him 58 to 42. So Reagan went with a safer pick, Anthony Kennedy, confirmed 97 to 0. And Kennedy went on to help save Roe v. Wade and write the same-sex marriage ruling. Roe itself? Written by a Nixon appointee. Liberal control of Congress meant that when the country voted for a conservative president, he was kind of hamstrung. Some of the biggest decisions in modern American history came from justices appointed by Republicans who wanted something else. And those decisions outlived the presidents, the congresses, and the voters who were around for them. Now, you know, that is by design. Checks and balances. You don't want one political party gaining too much power. Is what you say when your side is losing. But when you're winning, man, you gotta crush your enemies into the dust and make sure they never rise again. As politics gets more and more divided, people stop seeing the other side as opponents and start seeing them as the enemy. Not people you disagree with, but people who will destroy the country if they ever get power. And once you believe that, the rules start to look optional. Why respect a court ruling, an election result, or a confirmation process, if it hands power to the bad guys? Bending the rules stops being cheating, it becomes saving democracy. Each side tells itself it's only responding to what the other side did first. And each time they're probably at least partly right. That's how democracies actually die. Not in one dramatic coup, but one necessary exception at a time, with both sides convinced they're the ones saving it. What do you think? Leave your comments below. I do read as many as I can. But I read every comment on AmericaUncovered.tv, where you'll get access to thousands of episodes ad-free, plus a community chat, live streams, and more. Just click this button here or the link below. Once again, I'm Chris Chappell. Thank you for watching America Uncovered.