“The oath taken before the Speaker of the Sejm will, in my view, be invalid. The Speaker of the Sejm is not authorized to receive such an oath,” said New Left politician Piotr Kusznieruk. He added that responsibility for the unlawful appointment would primarily fall on judges who were improperly sworn in.
Four judges of the Constitutional Tribunal elected in March (Krystian Markiewicz, Maciej Taborowski, Marcin Dziurda, and Anna Korwin-Piotrowska) sent letters to President Karol Nawrocki inviting him to the Sejm at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday to receive their oaths of office. If the oath were to take place in the parliament building without the president, it would—put bluntly—amount to a constitutional coup.
Włodzimierz Czarzasty, Speaker of the Sejm, announced that he “takes co-responsibility for what will happen in the coming days regarding the appointment and the acceptance of the oath of judges of the Constitutional Tribunal.” This effectively signals acceptance of extra-legal procedures.
The planned event in the Sejm is viewed critically by New Left politician Piotr Kusznieruk, deputy chair of the party in the Podlaskie region.
“The oath taken before the Speaker of the Sejm will, in my view, be invalid. The Speaker of the Sejm is not authorized to receive such an oath,” he reiterated.
He added that he had expected “the president to rely on different grounds not to swear in any judge, because in my view those grounds existed at the time.” A few days ago, President Karol Nawrocki accepted the oath from two of the six individuals elected by the Sejm to vacant positions on the Constitutional Tribunal.
Kusznieruk emphasized that the planned action in the Sejm will be invalid.
“Even if Speaker Czarzasty promises to take co-responsibility, he will never actually bear it, because in reality responsibility for their actions and decisions will lie with those judges who will function in the Tribunal without being sworn in,” he said.