Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the Polish opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party has asked his party’s supporters for financial donations after a ruling by the country’s electoral commission that will likely strip PiS, the country’s largest political force, of millions of euros in state funds.
At a press conference on Tuesday, November 19th, Kaczyński said that “this is the only chance for Poland to preserve democracy.”
We will fight, but in order for this fight to be effective, we need money, because without money it is impossible to run a campaign or other activities.
On Monday, the electoral commission rejected the party’s 2023 financial report alleging misuse of campaign funds. The decision “was based on the same premise” as the rejection of PiS’s campaign financial report in August, when the party was accused of using public money for political campaigning before last year’s parliamentary elections.
The party could lose a total of 75 million zlotys (€17 million) in public funds over the next three years, leaving it short of campaign cash ahead of next year’s presidential election.
The ruling by the electoral commission comes as no surprise, as the Donald Tusk-led leftist-liberal coalition government has been attempting to undermine PiS with political, financial, and judicial means.
Ever since he returned to power last year, Donald Tusk, an EU conformist, has done everything in his power to indict and imprison former PiS-era ministers and purge state institutions whose leaders had been appointed by the previous conservative government.
The Tusk government has blatantly violated the rule of law. However, because of Tusk’s close standing to EU institutions—he was the head of the European Council, as well as the EU establishment European People’s Party—the Polish prime minister’s actions have not been condemned by Brussels and the liberal Western elites. Instead, they rewarded him by unfreezing EU funds to Poland—funds that had been unduly blocked under the previous PiS government.
The decision to thwart the largest political force’s access to state funds “shows that the current government’s plan is to eliminate the only real opposition in Poland through illegal, administrative actions,” PiS spokesman Rafał Bochenek said after the ruling was made public. He added that in this situation, “it is difficult to talk about fair presidential elections in Poland.”
His party has seven days to appeal the decision. It has already appealed the August decision to the Supreme Court, but the current government does not recognise the court’s authority since it views many of the judges as illegally appointed by the previous government.
In August, Law and Justice appealed to its supporters to transfer “even small amounts” of money to the party. “Recently, the number of payments has slowed down a bit, but we hope that after the start of the election campaign, it will accelerate again,” PiS treasurer Henryk Kowalczyk said.
