The Extraordinary Control Chamber of the Supreme Court has revoked a prior Sejm-related decision that ended Maciej Wąsik’s parliamentary mandate, a move described as having no binding legal effect by Arkadiusz Myrcha, a member of parliament and deputy head of the Ministry of Justice. He stressed that his remarks come in a personal capacity as a lawyer and legislator, noting that the ministry itself does not make an official statement on the matter.
The Supreme Court’s Chamber of Labor and Social Security is reviewing appeals from Maciej Wąsik and Mariusz Kamiński against the Sejm Speaker Szymon Hołownia’s mandate-terminating decision. A jury panel and closed sessions were scheduled for January 10 to consider both cases. The Wąsik panel included judges who had recently served on the Supreme Court, while Kamiński’s panel included judges who had previously served there before 2018.
Earlier, a judge handling Wąsik’s case decided to transfer it to the Extraordinary Control Chamber, which promptly nullified the Sejm President’s mandate-term decision, citing that Wąsik had received a presidential pardon from Andrzej Duda in 2015 and had later faced a conviction. In response, Hołownia stated that he had submitted the two appeals to the Chamber of Labor and Social Security and awaited a ruling from that chamber.
When pressed for comment in Toruń, Arkadiusz Myrcha (KO) spoke as a member of parliament and as a lawyer, reiterating that the ministry has no official stance on the issue. He described the latest developments in simple terms: the cases against the two lawmakers were legally anchored in final judgments, and the Chamber of Labor and Social Security had scheduled two sessions for January 10 with three-member panels to decide the appeals against the Sejm chairman’s termination decisions. Myrcha indicated that he expected a determination on January 10.
He characterized Thursday’s court actions as a matter of law, noting that the decision from the Extraordinary Control Chamber had been criticized by the President of the Labor Chamber, Judge Piotr Prusinowski, who stated that the Extraordinary Control Chamber is not a court. According to Myrcha, the Chamber’s withdrawal of the Sejm Speaker’s decision carries no legal force, and there are no legal consequences to the current situation; Wąsik’s supporters see the outcome as premature jubilation that may be unwarranted.
In a striking note, Myrcha asserted that Kamiński is not a current member of parliament and suggested that his identity card could be considered inactive. He added that Wąsik faces a few legal questions that will be clarified after the chamber’s forthcoming justification, but he did not view Wąsik’s status as substantially different from Kamiński’s at that moment.
Wąsik, who appeared on Radio Wnet, described the December verdict against him as clear and emphasized that the Supreme Court’s acknowledgment of the 2015 pardon granted to Kamiński, and to other CBA officials, had implications for their mandates. He suggested that the court’s December ruling had validated the pardon and thus nullified any punitive effect on their parliamentary terms, characterizing the December actions as a sham by some authorities.
Historically, Kamiński and Wąsik, once top figures in the CBA and the interior ministry, were convicted in the December prior cycle in connection with a land-related scandal. Hołownia, the Sejm Speaker, initially issued mandates ending their terms. The President, Andrzej Duda, had previously indicated in a letter that the 2015 pardon applied to Kamiński and Wąsik, nullifying grounds for their mandate expiry, and the President’s Office head noted that repeat pardons have already been deemed effective on multiple occasions by the Constitutional Court. (Source: wPolityce)