Tusk says all doubts around presidential elections should be dispelled
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said it was in the interest of the Polish state to dispel all doubts around the recent presidential elections.
He made the statement following a Wednesday meeting of the National Security Council (RBN), an advisory body to the president on matters of internal and external security, which is composed of top government and security officials and party leaders.
Tusk said that given the fact that both the incumbent President Andrzej Duda and the President-elect Karol Nawrocki took part in the RBN meeting, "he made the issue of credibility of the presidential elections very clear" to the participants.
He said he had told both the president and the president-elect that it was in the interest of the Polish state to dispel all doubts so that no one could question the electoral procedures and the election result.
Tusk added that he considered it "absolutely necessary" to reiterate that no one should question the result of the presidential vote.
"It cannot be the case that anyone, because they have suspicions, claims that these elections are invalid or that they need to be repeated," he said.
However, Tusk added, citizens have the right to be reassured that their votes were counted correctly, that there was no manipulation, abuse or errors on a large scale.
He said that even a single vote cannot be allowed to be ignored.
The official result of Poland's presidential runoff held on June 1 gave a narrow-margin victory to Nawrocki, a conservative historian supported by the main opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, with 369,591 votes ahead of liberal Warsaw Mayor Trzaskowski, supported by the ruling Civic Coalition (KO).
Media outlets have recently reported apparent discrepancies in vote counts at some polling stations. There is also controversy surrounding the so-called "Matecki app," an unofficial digital tool allegedly used to verify voting credentials during the election.
Meanwhile, Szymon Holownia, speaker of Sejm (the lower house), addressed the reports of irregularities in the vote count.
Talking to reporters on Wednesday, he spoke in favour of a "broad" election recount.
"When it comes to the election process itself, there can be absolutely no doubts about how it was conducted. Both in terms of financing and in terms of counting votes. I have a very clear and specific position that these votes should be recounted if necessary," Holownia said.
He also criticised the National Electoral Commission (PKW) for the lack of clarity in its report on this year's presidential ballot.
PKW admitted that during the voting, especially in the runoff, there were incidents that could have affected its result but did not provide an unequivocal assessment of these incidents. Instead, PKW said it "leaves it to the Supreme Court to assess their impact on the outcome of the election of the President of the Republic of Poland."
However, legality of the Supreme Court's Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs, the body, set up during the previous PiS government to verify election processes, has been questioned by some Polish judicial circles, the current government and EU courts due the fact that all of the chamber's judges were appointed in a procedure regarded as a violation of rule of law and the principle of separation of powers, thus not ensuring the judges' independence from politicians. (PAP)
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