00:00Now we want to hear from the other side of the issue, and to do this, Polish Secretary of State
00:05and Advisor to President Nawrowski, Marcin Pszczedacz, joins us now. Good morning to you.
00:12Good morning, very good morning. Hello, sir.
00:14So, the government says it is trying to restore the tribunal's independence after years of political interference.
00:20President Nawrowski says the government is trying to take control of the court. Which side is defending the Constitution?
00:28Well, definitely restoring any kind of rule of law, which the government claims should not be done by the 3
00:38,000 riot police entering the premises of the Constitutional Tribunal.
00:43And that is what happened in the evening of Friday, when people in Poland were heading towards their families out
00:52of Warsaw for the All Saints Day.
00:55It was a very quiet in the capital of Poland evening.
01:00President was on his way to Senegal, and suddenly we learned that Prime Minister Tusk sent 3,000 riot police
01:09troops in order to, as they say, clean the Constitutional Tribunal without any legal basis for that.
01:18Of course, there is a crisis. Of course, there is a dispute over that.
01:23But even the lawyers who are very close to the liberal government says that there is absolutely no legal basis
01:32for such a behavior of the government.
01:34What's more, the president of the Supreme Court and the president of the National Administrative Court, so the two most
01:42important judges in Poland, they also said publicly that there is absolutely no legitimate basis for such a behavior of
01:50the government.
01:51So that's why we are in such a crisis now in Poland.
01:54Sir, I mean, we all saw the scenes where President Noworowski entered the building, the tribunal building.
02:01Critics described the visit as a PR stunt to exert pressure on the court.
02:07Why did the president decide to intervene in person, and what exactly was he trying to achieve?
02:13Well, according to the Polish constitution, a president of the Republic of Poland is the guard of the constitution.
02:21So whenever he sees that the constitution is violated, he is obliged to react.
02:27But before going to the tribunal, he went to his own palace, invited the president of the Supreme Court in
02:35order to learn his perspective, in order to learn an expertise on that.
02:40What's going on and how should he treat that?
02:42The president is the head of state with a very strong, strong, he's a legitimized leader, I mean, with a
02:51very strong mandate.
02:52More than 10 million people voted directly for him, but he wanted to learn the perspective of the legal perspective.
03:01After learning that it's all illegal, he went there in order to first learn on the basis what's going on
03:09there.
03:09The second, to help the legitimate president and the deputy president of the tribunal enter the building in order to
03:18restore the order.
03:19Unfortunately, he was blocked by those appointees of Prime Minister Tusk, who are claiming that there are judges.
03:29But as Prime Minister Tusk publicly said, these are his judges.
03:34So the Prime Minister Tusk says, these are my judges.
03:38We believe that there shouldn't be any my, his or their judges.
03:42There should be legitimate legal judges, not Tusk's judges.
03:46Okay, so are President Nawrowski and Prime Minister Tusk now effectively fighting a constitutional war?
03:54Well, as I said, there is a constitutional crisis, definitely.
03:58And the people of Poland gathered in front of the tribunal protesting against that kind of situation,
04:05mostly protesting, of course, against the entrance of police.
04:09They do, there are evidence that there is a crisis.
04:15What President Nawrowski said and did after that, he invited all the political parties to the palace in order to
04:22talk.
04:23Because we believe that in democracy, it is the dialogue which may solve the crisis.
04:28The problem is that Prime Minister Tusk was not eager to really talk.
04:36He just issued his statement through the public television, saying that he will not step back from that,
04:45and he will only keep the police there in the constitutional tribunal.
04:50So all the other parties are very much eager to talk and to consult.
04:54And there is one main message coming from all the parties.
04:58It cannot be like this.
05:00There is a need for any kind of restart of a situation.
05:04So we do believe that based on that, we will build something positive.
05:08All right, Polish Secretary of State and Presidential Advisor Marcin Przedasz,
05:13thank you very much this morning.
05:15Thank you very much.
