Poland’s new ‘totalitarian’ government
EPA/PAWEL SUPERNAK
Published 11:11 November 24, 2015
Updated 11:11 November 24, 2015
Poland’s new ‘totalitarian’ government
Poland’s new conservative government, which won the October 25 general election, risks reducing the country’s Constitutional Court and secret services to political tools, according to analysts quoted by the Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The news agency said the highly contested moves by the eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party are examples of a “totalitarian democracy where those who have the majority are always right”. This is according to political scientist Stanislaw Mocek of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Prime Minister Beata Szydlo last week replaced the country’s four intelligence and counter-espionage chiefs. In response, members of the opposition Civic Platform (PO) branded the move a “coup”.
Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, however, insisted the changes were “not revenge, but a parting of ways with men who failed to prove themselves”.
As reported by AFP, almost immediately after taking office, the new government made a Constitutional Court change that was also sharply denounced by the opposition.
The PiS modified Constitutional Court legislation “so that no one could stop it from doing what it planned to do,” Mocek was quoted as saying by AFP.
In an interview with AFP, political scientist Kazimierz Kik, from Jan Kochanowski University in the central city of Kielce, said: The “PiS action doesn’t break the law but it creates the risk that the secret services will be used for political purposes in a country where the services already play too great a role in public life”.
Szydlo had campaigned on promises to “fix” her country and undertake generous welfare spending, imposing taxes on banks and foreign-owned supermarkets and refusing migrants entry into Poland.
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