Poland’s government-controlled television broadcaster TVP has been accused of participating in a presidential debate from which five candidates were excluded, leading to threats of legal action that could see the upcoming election invalidated.
The April 11 debate in legal terms was a campaign event in the town of Końskie organised by Rafał Trzaskowski, the presidential candidate of the Donald Tusk-led Civic Coalition. It was moderated by TVP and two commercial networks, TVN and Polsat.
The Polish electoral code states that public television is obliged to ensure fair access to airtime for every registered candidate, including debates between all of them.
Originally, the idea, which Trzaskowski initiated on April 9 with TVP, was for the debate to be between himself and Karol Nawrocki, the candidate for the biggest opposition party, the Conservatives (PiS).
The proposal was immediately slammed by the other candidates who alleged that public television was violating the electoral code by failing to give all candidates access.
Some of them had travelled to Końskie in southern Poland to attend a hustings organised by broadcaster TV Republika. Parliament Speaker Szymon Hołownia, who is standing for one of the parties of the ruling coalition, said he was going to turn up at the debate anyway.
Just two hours before the debate was about to begin, under pressure from PiS’s Nawrocki, who expressed solidarity with the excluded candidates, Trzaskowski announced that he was inviting all the candidates to take part.
That was met with fury by candidates who were not in Końskie on that day and had no chance of arriving in time.
The right-wing Confederation party’s Sławomir Mentzen, who has been polling in third place with more than 15 per cent, was touring a region which is some 200km from Końskie. Adrian Zandberg, a left-wing candidate who has garnered around 5 per cent in recent polls, had a meeting scheduled with Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Mentzen called the situation a “circus” of “Belarusian debating standards”, accusing Trzaskowski and Nawrocki of a “set-up into which they let in some other candidates to cover tracks”.
One of Mentzen’s allies, Confederation MP Przemysław Wipler, took to X and argued that State TV funding a debate organised by one of the candidates from which half of the others were excluded “constituted grounds for annulling the election”.
Zandberg went further and said he would be reporting Trzaskowski’s campaign to the public prosecutor for having allegedly broken election law by holding a campaign event with the help of State television.
There were chaotic scenes outside the debate venue when Trzaskowski’s security team forcibly removed journalists from independent conservative broadcasters TV Republika and wPolsce24. They also denied entry to some of Nawrocki’s campaign team.
Marek Jakubiak, who is standing for the small right-wing Republican party, said that at first he too had been denied entry into the debate venue by Trzaskowski’s security guards, but eventually managed to find his way in.
Independent candidate Krzysztof Stanowski complained that even on arrival at the rostrum assigned to him at the venue he had not received any information about the rules which were to apply during the debate.
Access to the broadcast of the three-hour debate, attended by eight out of the 13 candidates standing, was granted to all other TV stations, giving those lucky enough to reach the venue in the two hours available to do so free access to millions of viewers.
During the debate itself, the most controversial moment occurred when Nawrocki approached Trzaskowski’s rostrum and placed a rainbow flag on it, apparently to remind the ruling party’s candidate of the Civic Coalition candidate’s support for LGBT causes.
Trzaskowski, who of late has been pushing his centrist credentials by talking tough on migration and security, looked displeased and said that he identified with the Polish flag only.
He took the rainbow flag off his rostrum, which triggered the Left’s Magdalena Biejat to walk over and state that she was gladly taking that flag from him as she had no problem identifying with LGBT people.
The first round of the presidential election in Poland will take place on May 18 and the top two candidates will then face each other in a run-off second ballot on June 1.
