Tusk Weakened by the Dawn Raids and Brutality of His Government

The nomination by right-wing leader Jarosław Kaczyński, of the dynamic Karol Nawrocki, a candidate from outside the world of politics, and a good election campaign (despite the ruling party’s deprivation of public funding for the Conservative Law and Justice party) changed the course of Polish politics. No changes to the justice system proposed by the current parliamentary majority will now be passed. There will be no mass reconciliation either, at most a few cases as part of political revenge. And even then, the president may exercise his right of mercy at the end of the procedure.

However, all this does not explain such a sharp decline in support for the so-called restoration of “the rule of law”. Before 2023, marches by people demanding the complete reversal of changes and total subordination to European courts and the European Commission were able to gather hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Today, this is difficult to imagine. Why?

The answer lies in the brutal actions of the team that took power after 2023. It immediately began to use the justice system to achieve its political goals. This was the result of misreading the intentions behind the Polish people’s electoral decision. Tired of the reformist zeal of Law and Justice Prime Minister Kaczyński’s team and his justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, they expected restoration of peace in this area. What they got were political investigations initiated by Prime Minister Tusk at press conferences, with suggestions of guilt and verdicts. Actions that were considered by a large part of the public to be mere persecution of the opposition began on a massive scale.