“At the National Security Council, it is the president who presides, it is the president who asks questions and expects answers as the commander-in-chief. The NSC is not a forum for interrogating the president. The Speaker has confused roles and venues – this is not the Sejm, where he is Speaker, this is the NSC convened by the president, and it is the president, on behalf of Poles and with concern for Poland’s security, who will want to obtain answers from the Speaker, the prime minister, and the services,” Zbigniew Bogucki, head of the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, said today on TV Republika.
At the NSC meeting convened for Wednesday at 2 p.m., President Karol Nawrocki wants to discuss, among other things, issues related to the loan taken out by the government to implement the SAFE Programme and Poland’s invitation to join the Peace Council created at the initiative of U.S. President Donald Trump. The third announced topic of the NSC is to clarify all circumstances surrounding the eastern social and business contacts of the Speaker of the Sejm, Włodzimierz Czarzasty, including the Speaker’s contact with Russian national Svetlana Chestnykh.
Zbigniew Bogucki, head of the Chancellery of the President, in “The First Conversation of the Day” on TV Republika, when asked whether the president expects Czarzasty’s resignation, replied that “if Speaker Czarzasty had a sense of state responsibility, he would have resigned from his position long ago.”
“This is a matter of state, not a personal one, not about likes and dislikes, antipathies. We are talking about the second person in the state, about responsibility, security, about whether this person has been properly vetted by the services. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker did not undergo the vetting procedure,” he said. “On the one hand, we have the past – Speaker Czarzasty joined the communist party, the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR), at the most despicable time – after martial law. No one believed in communism then, and those who joined the party were opportunists, seeing only personal gain in it. Then came Ordynacka, the Rywin affair. We have the present – I will remind you of his statement when Law and Justice (PiS) was building the wall on the border, Czarzasty said it could be a threat to building future relations with Russia and Belarus, and now he is causing major turmoil and problems in relations with the United States. This is not acting in Poland’s interest, and this is the second person in the state,” he added.
He pointed out that the axis of the dispute is the issue of state security.
“Mr. Speaker is trying to reduce this to a personal conflict. This is false. The president is on the side of security, ensuring that the most important people in the state bear this responsibility and can carry this security for the state. Meanwhile, Mr. Speaker, while still a member of the Sejm committee for special services, would leave when information of a strictly classified nature was presented, because under the law he did not have access to it as an MP. Why did he not undergo vetting, why did he not fully work on this committee? Mr. Speaker is very principled when it comes to mileage reimbursements, settlements, money – he wants to present himself as ‘absolutely holy’ in these matters. The question is – what was the Speaker taking money for when he was a member of the committee for special services, if he could not fully participate in it,” Zbigniew Bogucki asked.
A week ago, Czarzasty announced that a letter from the Chancellery of the Sejm had been sent to the president, calling for expanding the NSC agenda to include “clarification of President Karol Nawrocki’s contacts with fan communities.” Responding to the suggestion that the leader of New Left is going to the NSC with a list of uncomfortable questions, Bogucki said:
“At the National Security Council, it is the president who presides, it is the president who asks questions and expects answers as the commander-in-chief. The NSC is not a forum for interrogating the president. The Speaker has confused roles and venues – this is not the Sejm, where he is Speaker, this is the NSC convened by the president, and it is the president, on behalf of Poles and with concern for Poland’s security, who will want to obtain answers from the Speaker, the prime minister, and the services.”