Citizen sues Poland’s president for violating rule of law

A civil trial against Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, in which a citizen accuses him of violating the rule of law, has begun in a Warsaw court.

Gerard Weychert, a resident of Silesia in southern Poland, is demanding that the president make a public apology “for unlawful interference with his right, as a citizen of the Republic of Poland, to live in a democratic state governed by the rule of law”.

Weychert also wants the court to prohibit Duda from “carrying out any further behaviour that violates the principles of a democratic state under the rule of law, with a concomitant obligation to take measures to protect the constitutional order in the republic”.

Weychert wants to call all living former presidents of the Constitutional Tribunal as witnesses in the trial, reports the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

Takiego procesu jeszcze w Polsce nie było. Mieszkaniec Śląska pozwał Prezydenta RP za łamanie konstytucji #wyborcza https://t.co/qG8mMnzylx

— Gazeta Wyborcza.pl (@gazeta_wyborcza) May 9, 2024

Weychert filed the lawsuit in 2020, pointing out that the president has a duty to uphold the rule of law and the constitution, as well as to exercise the utmost diligence in taking or preventing actions that could lead to a violation of the rules of a democratic state.

However, Weychert claimed that in fact, “through the actions and omissions of President Andrzej Duda, the principles of the rule of law as derived from the constitution were violated, which in turn violated the plaintiff’s right to live in a state…in which the authorities respect the rule of law”.

As examples, Weychert pointed to the changes that the former ruling Law and Justice (PiS) government, with which Duda was allied, introduced to the Constitutional Tribunal (TK), the Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS).

A wide range of expert bodies and international organisations – as well as the majority of the Polish public – regard PiS’s judicial reforms as a violation of the rule of law and an attempt to bring the judiciary under greater political control.

Over three quarters of Poles view the government’s judicial policies negatively and a majority think they have subordinated judges to political control, according to two new polls.

Even among supporters of the ruling coalition, 64% hold negative views https://t.co/NDlJuWxIDo

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 7, 2021

Weychert argues that the actions of the president in supporting those reforms had resulted in the violation of his personal rights.

“The conduct of the president…has repeatedly affected the constitutional order in the country, which has effectively prevented the plaintiff from exercising his civil rights,” reads the lawsuit, quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza.

“The conduct undertaken in the legislative process, expressed in the signing of laws that introduced unconstitutional regulations…led to a situation in which the plaintiff was not guaranteed his fundamental rights, including the right to respect and conduct of state bodies according to the principle of legalism.”

Poland records EU’s largest rule-of-law decline in new ranking by @TheWJP https://t.co/dBsSKOgH49

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) October 14, 2021

Weychert’s case was originally dismissed by a court, which found that the president was excluded from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. But an appeals court disagreed and ordered the case to move forward.

In 2021, the case went to the district court in Warsaw, but it did not have time to begin hearings until this week due to an excessive caseload.

Pointing to those delays, Weychert told Gazeta Wyborcza that they show how the “eight-year-long reform of the justice system Zbigniew Ziobro [justice minister in the PiS government] has failed”. Official data shows that courts now function more slowly than before PiS began its reforms.

Less than 9% of Poles believe the country’s courts function better now than they did before the current government began its overhaul of the judiciary in 2015.

Almost 53% think they have got worse, a new poll has found https://t.co/QiXKOfT5Na

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 23, 2023

A court spokeswoman told Notes from Poland that Friday’s first hearing was held in closed court but that a date of 23 May had been set to announce the verdict.

The president’s chancellery has not commented on the case. However, Duda and PiS have repeatedly defended their reforms and denied that they violated the rule of law.

Duda has in turn accused the new government, which replaced PiS in office in December, of violating the law in its efforts to undo some of PiS’s policies.

The government’s takeover of public media this week was a “gross violation of the constitution” and „anarchy [intended] to circumvent the law”, says President Duda.

Some legal scholars and commentators have also raised concern at how it was achieved https://t.co/8SqizPekyT

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 21, 2023

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Main image credit: Jakub Szymczyk/KPRP

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.