“The decision to maintain the connection between the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General is correct. Unfortunately, I think that the Public Prosecution Service will focus on pushing on purely ideological issues instead of focusing on priorities in prosecuting the most serious economic crimes, on security threats,” said Sebastian Kaleta (Sovereign Poland), Member of Parliament Sebastian Kaleta ( Sovereign Poland), in an interview with the portal wPolityce.pl. Deputy Minister of Justice in the government of Mateusz Morawiecki.
wPolityce.pl: Contrary to the announcements of the coalition that created the new government, Adam Bodnar took over the positions of both the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General in this government. How would you react to this, taking into account Donald Tusk’s previous claims that this merger means the liquidation of the independent prosecutor’s office?
Sebastian Kaleta: This is a classic method of manipulation and inversion of concepts used by the parties that form this coalition. If they do not govern, there is no democracy, no constitution, no rule of law. Why? Because they believe that these values are their own and that no one else can live up to them. This is authoritarian thinking: either total opposition or total power.
Donald Tusk’s words yesterday brought to light eight years of talk about the fact that the Public Prosecution Service should be independent in the sense that the Minister of Justice cannot have any influence or supervision over what the Public Prosecution Service does. As you can see, this doesn’t bother Tusk politically. He admitted it himself yesterday: that he doesn’t care.
So what’s the point?
As you can see, it’s all about who performs these functions. This is all the more bizarre because according to him, if he is his nominee, he is non-partisan and apolitical. This is of course nonsense, because Adam Bodnar has been involved as an opposition activist for years, and is now in the governing coalition. There is clear evidence of hypocrisy here.
Just as Zbigniew Ziobro, the Minister of Justice, could formally be Attorney General, so it was – with the exception of a few years – for most of the period of the Third Polish Republic. We all remember how dramatic the consequences of separating these functions were. This resulted in a lack of accountability for anything, the prosecutor’s office was in disarray and could not handle major scandals such as the Amber Gold scandal or the reprivatization scandal.
So in the end it was a good thing that the combination of these two functions in one person was retained?
Mr Bodnar, as Attorney General, is now politically responsible to Parliament for the functioning of the public prosecutor’s office. Donald Tusk fully exposed his hypocrisy with his words.
When we started reforming the Public Prosecution Service in 2015, after years of experimenting with separating these functions, no one was responsible for the way the Public Prosecution Service functioned. And since no one is responsible, over time this prosecutor’s office simply stopped performing its duties properly. The current legal status in force at the Public Prosecution Service and which we consider appropriate, because even after many years of experience in the functioning of the reform, some corrections have been made. On the one hand, it guarantees the proper exercise of the function of the Attorney General by the Minister of Justice, who can provide general instructions for the work of the public prosecutor’s office. On the other hand, this system does not interfere with the individual work of individual prosecutors. There is a lot of independence within the public prosecutor’s office, but it is incomplete. There is no independence of everything; cannot exist in any institution. In short, institutionally it is a correct arrangement.
In the wrong hands, even good weapons can be dangerous too. How do you evaluate Adam Bodnar in the context of these two positions?
Each minister has his own certain personal characteristics. Unfortunately, I do not expect much from Mr Bodnar, given his performance as Commissioner for Human Rights. For example, he did not support the victims of reprivatization. We also know and see that he may be focusing on ideological issues. When it comes to crime in Poland, when it comes to revelations and other announcements, hate speech is the biggest crime in the eyes of most politicians who referred to this topic in the new governing coalition. So if someone doesn’t like the LGBT ideology – which Ms Żukowska was talking about – he can be put in jail.
Mr Bodnar supports this line of thought. Unfortunately, I believe that instead of focusing on priorities in prosecuting the most serious economic crimes, security threats or fighting for the good name of border guards, the Public Prosecutor’s Office will concentrate on insisting on purely ideological issues to protect the freedom of to suppress expression and to impose freedom of expression by force. LGBT agenda on Poland. So I’m quite concerned that he will be an ideological attorney general.
READ ALSO:
— Tusk’s government has not separated the functions of the head of the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General. What has the European Commission recommended in this regard?
— Tusk gives a laurel wreath to the candidate for Minister of Justice: Bodnar guarantees that the Public Prosecution Service will be independent
– ONLY HERE. They are already stirring! Bodnar: We will fix the justice system. If we want to restore freedom, we must do so in accordance with the law
Source: wPolityce