Polish president-elect appeals to PM not to “destroy democracy” by questioning election result

Poland’s opposition-aligned president-elect, Karol Nawrocki, has appealed to Prime Minister Donald Tusk not to “destroy democracy” by calling into question the validity of his recent election victory. His remarks come after Tusk suggested a full recount of votes could be necessary due to irregularities.

Nawrocki, the candidate supported by the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, emerged triumphant in a run-off election on 1 June against Rafał Trzazkowski, the deputy leader of Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO).

The result was a bitter blow to the government, which will now have to continue cohabiting with a largely hostile, PiS-aligned president after incumbent Andrzej Duda leaves office in August. The president exercises the power of veto, allowing them to block much of the government’s agenda.

Since Nawrocki’s victory, some figures from Tusk’s ruling coalition have been highlighting reports of irregularities at some polling stations, in particular cases where votes in favour of Trzaskowski were wrongly assigned to Nawrocki.

In response to such complaints, the Supreme Court ordered partial recounts at 13 polling stations. On Saturday, the national prosecutor’s office confirmed that, among 10 of those cases that it had reviewed, votes had been wrongly assigned in favour of Nawrocki in seven of them.

The number of votes in question is nowhere near enough to overturn Nawrocki’s nearly 370,000-vote margin of victory. However, there are still other protests relating to the election being considered by the Supreme Court, which is responsible for validating election results.

Around 50,000 complaints were submitted in total, the court’s spokesman told PAP on Friday. The court is supposed to consider them all by 2 July before issuing a decision that day on the validity of the elections.

When asked about the issue on Friday, Tusk said that, “if the protests are checked and it turns out that the elections were falsified on a scale that changed the election result, then of course all the votes in the entire country should be counted”.

If that happens, “there should not be any talk of swearing in the president” until the result is clarified, he added, quoted by news website wPolityce. However, Tusk emphasised that he was not himself making any assumption as to the validity of the elections and was not aiming to invalidate them.

The prime minister also noted that his government does not recognise the legitimacy of the Supreme Court chamber tasked with validating elections, due to the fact that it is staffed with judges appointed by a body rendered illegitimate by PiS’s judicial reforms when it was in power.

He appealed to Duda to withdraw his veto of a bill that aimed to resolve the dispute, so that “we will have judges of the Supreme Court whose decision we will all accept”.

On Saturday afternoon, Duda responded to the prime minister’s remarks by declaring that “Donald Tusk and his colleagues cannot come to terms with losing the presidential election”. He called on them to “stop the provocations, lies and pressure”.

“Stay away from the presidential election ballot papers!” continued Duda. “I have no doubt that you must not be allowed to even touch the votes cast by citizens.”

On Sunday, Nawrocki himself also weighed in on Tusk’s comments. “Mr Prime Minister, we have to start getting used to each other, so it’s time to abandon the hysteria and not destroy Polish democracy, but start cooperating,” said the president-elect, quoted by Polsat News.

A poll carried out by UCE Research on behalf of the Onet news website and published last week found that just over half of Poles, 51.5%, favour a recount of all votes. A further 15.1% only want recounts in districts where errors were identified while 25.8% are opposed to any recount.

Another poll by SW Research for Rzeczpospolita, a leading daily, found 49% of Poles in favour of a full recount and 38.9% opposed.

However, the head of the Supreme Court chamber tasked with validating the election, Krzysztof Wiak, told news website Money.pl that there is no regulation allowing for a recount of votes in places where no irregularities have been identified.

Main image credit: Kuba Atys / Agencja Wyborcza.pl