“An application will be submitted by President Karol Nawrocki to the Constitutional Tribunal to resolve a competence dispute between the President of the Republic and the Sejm represented by the Speaker of the Sejm,” announced the Head of the Chancellery of the President, Zbigniew Bogucki. The matter concerns the so-called pseudo-oath of newly appointed Constitutional Tribunal judges, which took place today in the Sejm.
A pseudo-oath ceremony for the new Constitutional Tribunal judges was held today in the Sejm, attended, among others, by representatives of the December 13 coalition – Speaker of the Sejm Włodzimierz Czarzasty, Speaker of the Senate Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, as well as some former presidents of the Constitutional Tribunal, including Andrzej Zoll, Marek Safjan, and Jerzy Stępień.
At a press conference, the Head of the Chancellery of the President, Zbigniew Bogucki, stated that “the president does not in any way recognize what happened today in the Sejm as an oath.”
“This can only be described as a political farce or a grotesque, some kind of political theater,”
he said.
He recalled that Karol Nawrocki accepted the oath from two judges on April 1, “while concerning the remaining judges, neither the President of the Republic nor representatives of the Presidential Chancellery ever stated that the oath would not be accepted or that it would not take place.”
“These judges could have waited. They could have exercised patience. I do not know whether it was political emotion, bad advice, misguided suggestions, or political pressure, although judges should be free from political pressure, that caused them to proceed today with an act that is, on the one hand, grotesque, and on the other, extremely sad. One might say it is a kind of tragicomedy, because it produces no legal effects, and cannot produce any, as it is inconsistent with statutory law and the Constitution, but it is also sad from the perspective of the degradation of the Polish state,”
he said.
He emphasized that such actions violate a number of constitutional provisions.
“It was the nation that elected the president, and the law and the constitutional framers granted him appropriate competences and prerogatives in the Constitution […] the president, in accordance with the Polish constitutional order, will submit this matter for consideration to the Constitutional Tribunal under Article 189 of the Constitution, because President Nawrocki is proceeding along a constitutional path, not along the path of lawlessness presented today by the ruling majority,”
he stressed.
“There were no grounds for this kind of political stunt, this kind of grotesque act, to be carried out in such a form. Therefore, President Nawrocki will submit a motion to the Constitutional Tribunal to resolve a competence dispute between the President of the Republic and the Sejm, represented by the Speaker of the Sejm. Thus, central constitutional bodies are in dispute regarding what has taken place in recent days,”
he added.