Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has entered the election fray in Poland to accuse the opposition Conservatives (PiS) candidate Karol Nawrocki of having been involved in football hooliganism and with criminals in Gdańsk, the city both Tusk and Nawrocki hail from.
The PiS candidate has been criticised throughout the campaign over the fact that as a young man he had worked as a security guard at a nightclub and a casino in Gdańsk and allegations that as an amateur boxer he had contacts within the criminal underworld.
Nawrocki, who in his youth was a regional heavyweight amateur boxing champion in Gdańsk, has denied ever having been involved in any activity relating to crime or of having associates involved in criminal activity. He has said that in a boxing club gymnasium it was likely that some of those attending were suspect.
Apart from being the PiS presidential candidate, Nawrocki is head of the State National Institute of Remembrance, the body responsible for tracking German Nazi and Communist era crimes. This body has taken down scores of Soviet era monuments in Poland, actions for which Nawrocki has been placed on Russia’s wanted list. As a result he has carried a licensed firearm for self-defence.
News of Nawrocki’s alleged involvement in organised football violence first surfaced publicly during a live Youtube interview on May 22 between him and Confederation party candidate Sławomir Mentzen.
Mentzen, who finished third in the first round of the presidential election, asked Nawrocki about allegedly taking part in fights between football fans. The PiS hopeful did not deny having done so.
Instead, he described the episode as part of “forms of noble, masculine combat” linking his involvement in such fights to his long career as an amateur boxer.
On the evening of May 22, in an interview with liberal-leaning broadcaster TVN, Tusk warned that Poland was in danger of electing a man who, he alleged, had connections with criminals.
“For the first time in Polish history, we have a presidential candidate who cannot hide his direct links to the criminal underworld,” Tusk said, adding that “more dirt will emerge in the next few days”. When pressed by the interviewer to reveal more, Tusk replied: “That is your job.”
Journalists soon obliged and on May 23 portals Wirtualna Polska and Onet published details of Nawrocki’s alleged involvement in football violence in an organised fight between supporters from rival clubs in 2009 involving around 140 people, some of whom reportedly had criminal records.
The two portals published eyewitness and fan website accounts of the confrontation. Nawrocki was reported to have allegedly fought alongside members of the “Hooligans of the Free City” Lechia Gdańsk supporters.
According to Polish law, taking part in such organised fights was a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in prison.
Nawrocki’s campaign manager Paweł Szefernaker addressed the allegations during a press conference on May 23, confirming that Nawrocki had taken part in what he described as a “youthful episode”. He said the PiS candidate “does not feel ashamed” of the incident and regarded it as “noble masculine combat”.
In a televised debate between Nawrocki and the Tusk centre-left government’s candidate Rafał Trzaskowski, also on May 23, the PiS hopeful accused his opponents of hypocrisy over reports that the Polish PM in his youth had allegedly been involved in skirmishes between football fans.
Tusk, appearing in a TVN programme back in 2007, admitted that “as a young man I was an ardent Lechia Gdańsk fan from the “Scrum” , the place where things could get hairy”.
According to an eyewitness report documented in Wirtualna Polska in 2023, when Tusk was 18 in 1975 he went with thousands of other Lechia Gdańsk fans to an away game in Bydgoszcz and took a metal pipe with him. That, Tusk reportedly said “came in handy when a group of our fans where surrounded by fans brandishing wooden handles”.
“Thanks to that hose [pipe] our opponents backed off.”
At the same televised debate, Nawrocki was caught on camera appearing to be putting something up his nose while covering up his mouth.
Facing asocial media claims he had inhaled illegal substances, Nawrocki on May 24 cut short the speculation by admitting that he had taken snus: concentrated nicotine pouches which are available legally for sale in Sweden.
In Poland, while it is illegal to import snus for trade or buy the product online, it is possible to import it for personal use, according to the Global Smoking and Tobacco Harm Reduction Database.
“If this interests the public so much, then they have the right to know. When listening to Trzaskowski boasting about his connections, I took a nicotine pouch, but I’m glad this irked the public’s curiosity,” Nawrocki said.
To remove any lingering suspicions, Nawrocki said his campaign team were willing to undergo tests for the presence of drugs in their bodies as long as Trzaskowski and his campaign team did the same.
“The public has the right to know about the status of our health and what substances are in our bodies. Tomorrow [May 25] we will both be in Warsaw and I invite Rafał Trzaskowski to undergo tests to detect any substances in our bodies,” Nawrocki said.
Trzaskowski refused his challenge and stated: “I get all my energy from meetings with voters.”
