Tens of thousands of opposition supporters massed outside Poland’s Parliament on Thursday to protest against the new government’s changes to state media and the imprisonment of two former ministers convicted of abuse of power.
On Jan. 9, Polish police entered the presidential palace in Warsaw and arrested Mariusz Kaminski, former interior minister, and his deputy Maciej Wasik, both members of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Both ex-ministers served under Poland’s previous PiS-led government. The arrests appear to be a political purge following contentious elections last October.
After running the country since 2015, the PiS party was swept from power last October. It was replaced by a broad coalition of left-leaning and nominally conservative parties.
The new coalition government is led by Donald Tusk, a veteran politician who previously served as Poland’s prime minister from 2007 to 2014.
Decidedly “pro-European” in outlook, Mr. Tusk also served as president of the European Council—which is mandated with guiding European Union policy—from 2014 to 2019.
As prime minister, Mr. Tusk has vowed to repair Warsaw’s relations with Brussels, which were strained under the previous government.
He has also pledged to undo many of the conservative policies pursued by his PiS predecessors.
The march came as Polish President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, said on Thursday that he had started proceedings to pardon the two ministers, escalating his stand-off with the new government.
Protesters chanted “we will win,” sang the Polish national anthem, and listened to speeches from PiS lawmakers and activists before they started their march to the offices of the state-run TV station.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the PiS party, addressed the protesters, saying: “They [Polish ex-ministers] are in prison because they were fighting corruption on the highest entity level. And those who are ruling today, they do not accept it.”
“If we are supposed to win, we need to change this government” using the ballot, Mr. Kaczynski said. “They are not even in power for a full month yet because there are two more days [to mark] their first month. Because it’s the government of Dec. 13,” he added, alluding to the day of Dec. 13, 1981, when martial law was introduced in communist Poland.
Mr. Kaminski was an anti-communist activist when Poland was still under communist rule.
A retired teacher from Cracow, Teresa Zielinska, told protesters: “I came here because I do not agree with what is happening in our country right now. I am concerned about lawlessness, and we are not used to it after so many years since the fall of communism.”
Conviction of Ex-ministers
When PiS first came to power eight years ago, Mr. Duda pardoned Mr. Kaminski after he was convicted of abusing power while heading Poland’s anti-corruption bureau.Mr. Kaminski and Mr. Wasik were accused of allowing agents under the former’s command to use entrapment in an investigation. They denied wrongdoing and were pardoned by Mr. Duda, allowing them to take up their government posts.
But after last October’s parliamentary election, Poland’s Supreme Court reopened the case against Mr. Kaminski and overturned Mr. Duda’s pardon.
The court also sentenced Mr. Kaminski and his deputy, Mr. Wasik, to two years in prison.
On Jan. 8, the court issued formal arrest warrants for both men.
The next day, Mr. Duda—who insists his initial pardon should stand—hosted both men at the presidential palace.
Nevertheless, shortly after the meeting, police entered the building and arrested the two former officials.
Mr. Duda, for his part, was reportedly not in the building when the arrests occurred.
Mr. Tusk, meanwhile, has accused Mr. Duda of “obstructing justice” by hosting the two men at the presidential palace.
Grazyna Ignaczak-Bandych, the head of the Polish president’s staff, later claimed that police had entered the building “illegally” and had failed to provide any documentation “that would authorize their actions.”
On Jan. 10, Mr. Kaminski announced from prison that he had started a hunger strike to protest his arrest.
“I treat my conviction … as an act of political revenge,” he said in a statement, which was read aloud by a spokesman outside the prime minister’s office.
“As a political prisoner, I am starting a hunger strike from the first day of my imprisonment,” the statement read.
Maria Ejchart, Poland’s deputy justice minister, responded, “If a politician is in prison, it does not mean he is a political prisoner.”
Media Overhaul
Since assuming power, Mr. Tusk’s coalition government has carried out a wide-ranging overhaul of state media institutions, claiming they had become “propaganda outlets” under the previous government.PiS officials, however, contest the legality of the changes, which they say are aimed at silencing conservative voices in state-run media.
