photo: EUobserver |
'Poland's judicial purge was designed to punish former communist stooges', its government has argued, as the EU debate with Warsaw gets angrier by the day.
The kind of people whose verdicts in the 1980s led to jail terms and deaths of personal friends of Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki were still sitting in the country's Supreme Court (SC) and had to go, he told MEPs in Strasbourg on Wednesday (4 July).This week saw the culmination of the political fight over the Supreme Court. Polish President decided to remove the head of the Supreme Court, Profesor Gersdorf, who reached a mandatory age of retirement.
There is however, a tiny problem. The judge who is next in line, according to the seniority, was discovered to be not just one of the 'former communist stooges'. He seems to be the COMMUNIST STOOGE.
According to the wiki website that documents the history of the communist era judiciary, he was a military judge during the Martial Law. He was one of the judges who sent anti-government protesters and conspirators to jail.
In other words, he is exactly the man the new Polish law was designed to purge from the ranks of judiciary.
Why the president was not aware of that? Doesn't he have people who vet candidates? Yes he does, but it may not be easy if the documents disappear. In the last two weeks Polish media report that it has been uncovered that since the fall of communist regime in 1989 until 2005 millions of documents related to secret police, communist party and military intelligence have been destroyed by the "deep state".
But, the Deep State in Europe goes deeper than most people think. Recent problems that Poland has with the EU over the rule of law is fueled by opposition party, Civic Union. They are called the Total Opposition since they don't see any boundaries to how far they are willing to go. Their representatives in the EU parliament found allies among other socialist, green and other left leaning parties and are trying to undermine any badly needed reforms.