Poland’s justice minister Adam Bodnar has suspended deputy prosecutor general Michał Ostrowski and launched disciplinary proceedings against him.
Ostrowski is a senior prosecutor investigating a submission by the chief justice of the Constitutional Tribunal, or court (TK), that accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk and other government officials, including Bodnar, of a coup d’etat.
Bodnar on February 11 accused Ostrowski of breaking the law by taking up the court’s allegations without authorisation. That, he said, showed “a lack of respect for the basic principles of the functioning of the prosecutor’s office”. He suspended Ostrowski for six months for “violating the principle of objectivity and impartiality” in acting on behalf of PiS.
The justice ministry had already said it considered the submission made by the Constitutional court to Ostrowski as invalid as it did not abide by the official procedure of filing submissions to the prosecution service.
Ostrowski was appointed as deputy prosecutor general during PiS’ time in government and was seen as a close ally of former PiS justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro.
Speaking to broadcaster wPolsce24 earlier, Ostrowski said he had already started investigating the case by interviewing former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the chief justice of the Supreme Court Małgorzata Manowska and other senior members of the judiciary.
The opposition Conservatives (PiS) have accused the current government of intervening to stop an investigation into the the administration’s actions.
“This decision is nothing short of an admission of guilt by Bodnar,” alleged former PiS deputy justice minister Sebastian Kaleta.
“First, they mocked the investigation. Now they are frantically trying to block it,” wrote another former PiS deputy justice minister Michał Woś MP, adding that “the prosecutor’s office is a private tool of Tusk and Bodnar”.
He was referring to the fact that when Tusk learned about the Constitutional court’s allegations of a coup d’etat, he posted a film in which he played table tennis and said that was more important than the allegations.
The head of the court, Bogdan Święczkowski, a PiS ally, on February 6 announced he had filed a notification to Ostrowski, accusing senior government figures of operating as an “organised criminal group” in order to mount a “coup” to change the system of government through their refusal to recognise rulings of the TK, the Supreme Court and other judicial bodies.
The submission also alleged that the government had illegally dismissed the national prosecutor Dariusz Barski and appointed Dariusz Korneluk in his place without the legal requirement of consent from President Andrzej Duda.
The PiS and the centre-left government led by Tusk have clashed bitterly over the latter’s takeover of public media and the prosecution service and the government’s decision to derecognise the Constitutional court and parts of the Supreme Court.
The Tusk government has been attempting to overturn changes in Poland’s judiciary made by the previous PiS government, which were questioned by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice.
Still, as it is not able to persuade the PiS-aligned President, who can veto its legislative proposals, the Tusk administration has taken to attempting to by-pass legislation with governmental and parliamentary resolutions .
That, in turn, has created further conflict with the opposition and senior figures in the judiciary.
