2024-01-04 14:22 update: 2024-01-08, 17:15
Fot. PAP/Leszek Szymański
The Public Affairs Chamber of Poland's Supreme Court waived on Thursday a decision by the parliamentary speaker to revoke the parliamentary mandate of a former deputy interior minister convicted of abuse of power.
A Supreme Court spokesman told PAP that the court's Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs had upheld an appeal by Maciej Wasik, an MP of the former ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), against the decision of Sejm (lower house) Speaker Szymon Holownia to strip him of his seat.
However, the chamber that heard the case is considered not a court under EU law in accordance with rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Because of that, Holownia had sent Wasik's appeal to a different unit of the court, the Labour Chamber, which does not raise such concerns.
The Labour Chamber is yet to consider Wasik's appeal.
The current pro-EU government blames PiS of politicising the Supreme Court and bringing chaos to Poland's justice system. It appears that in the current situation two different chambers of the same Supreme Court may issue contraditing rulings.
In December, two former Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA) heads and most recently interior and deputy interior ministers, Mariusz Kaminski and his deputy Wasik, were sentenced to two years imprisonment for abuse of power and illegal operational activities in a so-called land scam of 2007. The ruling was issued by a Regional Court of the second instance, in Warsaw, and is final.
Holownia ordered the revocation of both MPs' mandates on December 21.
In 2015, the president, Andrzej Duda, pardoned Kaminski and Wasik after they were sentenced to three years in prison for masterminding an anti-corruption provocation in 2007 that a Warsaw court found illegal and criminal. Two other CBA officials also received prison sentences.
Following the announcement of Holownia's decision, Duda disputed it in a letter to the speaker, stating that "due to the application of the power of pardon to Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wasik, there are no prerequisites to terminate their mandates." (PAP)
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