The truce between Poland’s right-wing Confederation party, its election candidate Sławomir Mentzen and the main opposition and fellow right-wing Conservatives (PiS) and its candidate Karol Nawrocki has ended in acrimony.
The fall-out came amid allegations that Nawrocki acquired a property from an elderly disabled man in return for care that the pensioner never actually received.
Mentzen called Nawrocki’s alleged behaviour a “disgrace” and on his social media account added that the PiS candidate was not fit to be president.
The Confederation candidate was commenting on a developing story about Nawrocki that emerged from what the PiS alleged were leaks from its candidate’s security file.
On May 5, a week after Nawrocki had claimed in a TV debate that he owned just one apartment, it emerged that he in fact owned a second. His campaign issued a statement admitting that and adding Nawrocki was not living there as he was looking after an elderly disabled man who was, from whom he had purchased the property.
Shortly afterwards it transpired that the disabled man in question had been living in a social care home funded by the city of Gdańsk since April 2024.
Nawrocki’s campaign then claimed their candidate had lost contact with the man in December last year when he tried to visit him at the apartment. Nawrocki said he was still covering all expenses with regard to the upkeep of the flat.
On May 6, PiS published his declaration of interest to confirm that he had never hidden the fact of possessing the apartment.
Later the same day, a property deed showed how much Nawrocki was said to have paid for the apartment, which was at the going market rate of the period in question (2017).
In an internet TV interview following that, though, Nawrocki admitted he did not actually pay the senior the sum recorded in the property deed. He said that was because they had come to an arrangement in which Nawrocki was to meet the property costs and continue to assist the old man until his passing.
The PiS candidate claimed he had been helping the pensioner “intensively” until he left Gdańsk in 2021 to live and work in Warsaw, after which he admitted that his contact with and help for the old man had become “infrequent”.
Nawrocki has been attacked by the ruling Civic Coalition with the party’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying the “whole thing stinks”. In response, he ordered officials to prepare legislation that “will protect vulnerable old people from being taken advantage of”.
On May 6, Nawrocki was further condemned by the Confederation’s presidential candidate Mentzen.
“Nawrocki has done something appalling. He has taken over an apartment from an old and vulnerable sick man without paying for it,” Mentzen alleged on Facebook.
“To make it worse he lied to the notary that he had paid for it. I simply cannot imagine how that is acceptable for anyone with a social conscience,” he added.
Mentzen admitted that during the current campaign he had not previously targeted Nawrocki, concentrating instead on attacking Tusk and the PM’s party candidate Rafał Trzaskowski.
“I spared Nawrocki from attacks despite the fact that I did not think he was a good choice,” Mentzen said.
“But there are red lines which PiS have crossed and I cannot accept that tolerating such behaviour as that of Nawrocki is good for Poland.”
He added: “It is not in the interests of the Right for people who are compromised to represent it.”
Mentzen said it was not his fault the PiS failed to find a candidate from within their own ranks, an allusion to the fact that Nawrocki was not a PiS member and that the party in the first phase of the campaign had projected him as an independent candidate with its support.
“If you really want to stop Tusk and Trzaskowski ruling Poland you would withdraw Nawrocki right now,” Mentzen concluded.
The PiS reacted angrily to Mentzen’s intervention.
Michał Woś MP told portal Do Rzeczy that the Confederation party’s candidate was falling foul “of a provocation organised by the security services who leaked information about Nawrocki and steered the liberal media towards launching an assault on the PiS candidate”.
Woś recalled the words of security services expert professor Sławomir Cenckiewicz who, in early April, had predicted here would be a move against Nawrocki.
That was based on the fact that the security services were in possession of Nawrocki’s security file because the PiS candidate headed the Institute of National Remembrance and required security clearance to serve in that position.
