How was it – Liberals business? One such label was associated with the Liberal Democratic Congress, a 1990s group led by Donald Tusk for most of its existence. The sides changed, Tusk changed, he went higher and higher, always somehow wiping away all the mud that clung to his formation. Now, however, he must seriously fear the consequences of the scandal, because international public opinion is watching the matter.
You cannot provoke a riot here and shout that political opponents – who, of course, violate the principles of democracy and the rule of law – are seeking an opportunity to behead Donald. That they secretly sew some shoes for him. Here the whole of Europe looks and sees the dry facts: the Belgian police penetrate two floors of the Brussels headquarters of the European People’s Party to secure computers and documents. The case concerns corruption during the 2019 European Parliament election campaign.
For now, Manfred Weber and Mario Voigt are named as protagonists in the scandal. The first is a politician from the German CDU, the current head of the European People’s Party (to which the Civic Platform belongs). This year he replaced Donald Tusk in this position. Previously (also in 2019) he chaired the EPP group in the European Parliament. Voigt today leads the CDU in one of the German states – Thuringia and holds the mandate of a member of the European Parliament. In 2019, he spearheaded Weber’s online campaign.
The EPP press service tried to play down the matter, saying that the police … “paid a visit” to the party headquarters. It sounds humorous, but the Christian Democrats are not laughing at all. Because although the investigation concerns scams in Thuringia, searches of EVP offices indicate that we are dealing with a much wider scandal.
In 2019, Donald Tusk was the head of the European Council. During the election campaign in Poland, he patronized the broad support of the opposition parties that went to the European elections under the banner of the European Coalition (and lost to PiS). As head of the EPP European Council, he must have been in close contact with Manfred Weber. And in December 2019, he became the head of the EPP.
The investigation by the German and Belgian police covers the period of the last 15 years, including the time of Tusk’s reign in the European Christian Democrats.
Does the leader of the PO have anything to fear? Theoretically, nothing points to it. But why did he first announce his absence from next week’s EPP summit in Warsaw, and now order the meeting to be canceled altogether? We’re starting Easter time, so there probably won’t be an opportunity to ask Tusk about it, he’s been given a few days’ rest. But there is no doubt that the former Polish prime minister fears that corruption among his close comrades from the European faction may also cast a shadow over him. This is how Euractiv interprets it, which was the first to inquire about the case. Well, Donald Tusk is probably just an extremely unhappy politician. Scandals are constantly breaking out around him, and many of his associates are of particular interest to law enforcement. Suffice it to say that 13 of the ministers of the PO-PSL governments are already being prosecuted, and especially the cases of Sławomir Nowak (formerly Tusk’s right-hand man) or Włodzimierz Karpiński (finance minister!) even seem obvious. the courts that ruled on arrests.
No one is claiming that the Civic Platform president played a part in any of these scandals. We have found no evidence for this. It can be said that Donald Tusk is clean as a tear. Except he’s standing in a puddle full of mud.
Source: wPolityce