“I did not encourage anyone to stage a coup. I had no contact whatsoever with the Speaker of the Sejm,” explained Professor Andrzej Zoll during a broadcast on TVN24. In the interview, there was no sign of any aggressive proposals to prevent the swearing-in of Karol Nawrocki. “This is not a comfortable situation for me,” admitted the legal expert.
Professor Andrzej Zoll, former President of the Constitutional Tribunal, had been publicly speculating for several weeks about various scenarios regarding the outcome of the presidential elections. One particular idea he shared on TVN24 gained significant attention.
“The National Assembly should not only administer the oath of office to Karol Nawrocki but also confirm the validity of the election,”
he argued.
“I imagine it this way: the National Assembly, convened for August 6, should allow the Prosecutor General, who is also a senator, and thus a member of the assembly, to present the allegations he has regarding the Chamber of Control. Let the National Assembly make a decision and determine the validity of the election. (…) This possibility should be used so that the National Assembly speaks out on the validity of the elections (…). Under these circumstances, I believe the swearing-in should be suspended,”
Zoll proposed, advocating for a precedent-setting intervention.
Professor Zoll likely did not anticipate that his remarks would trigger a political storm, or that by the end of the month, he would be forced to dramatically retract his bold proposals.
When the Speaker of the Sejm’s comments about, among others, lawyers urging him to delay Karol Nawrocki’s swearing-in and commit a coup were widely reported, the media quickly linked those remarks to Professor Zoll’s earlier statements. The legal scholar then backpedalled on TVN24, distancing himself from the previously suggested scenarios.
“The Speaker had no grounds to say I encouraged him, because I did not encourage anyone. In my TVN interview, I spoke about possible solutions to a very harmful situation for the Polish state, which arose from suspicions that the vote counting after the June 1 election was flawed and skewed the results,”
Zoll insisted during Monday’s edition of Fakty po Faktach.
He added that he had intended to show a way to calm the situation.
“I never said the National Assembly shouldn’t be convened,” he added, though no one had actually accused him of saying that.
He repeatedly emphasised: “I did not encourage anyone to stage a coup. I had no contact with the Speaker of the Sejm, and the Speaker had no basis to suspect me of trying to influence him concerning a coup.”
Professor Zoll also addressed the criminal complaint filed against him with the Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office by the association Lawyers for Poland (Stowarzyszenie Prawnicy dla Polski).
“I’m in a very difficult situation because I’ve learned that the Polish Lawyers’ Association (Lawyers for Poland) has submitted a complaint to the prosecutor’s office, alleging that I committed a crime by speaking on Tak jest on TVN24. This is not a comfortable situation for me,”
he said.
“I wanted to use my remarks to highlight a way to resolve this abnormal situation in Poland in a constructive manner,”
he explained.