Poland’s Duda pledges to pardon jailed MPs

Polish President Andrzej Duda said Thursday that he would pardon two members of parliament facing two years in prison for abuse of power — a significant retreat on his earlier position that a pardon he issued in 2015 was enough to spare them from jail.

He said he made the decision after meeting with the wives of Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik earlier in the day.

The two were members of parliament for the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which ruled Poland from 2015 until October’s general election.

They were convicted in December of using fake documents in a 2007 attempt to incriminate the coalition allies of Law and Justice. They ignored the verdict and took refuge in Duda’s palace in central Warsaw before being arrested Tuesday evening.

Poland’s Supreme Court found that Duda’s 2015 pardon was improper as it was issued before the two were convicted, allowing a lower court to resume the case.

Now Duda is being more careful.

“I want this proceeding to be conducted absolutely according to all constitutional and statutory standards,” he said Thursday.

The government insists that Kamiński and Wąsik were properly convicted — which means they can no longer serve as MPs — and that the only way for them to avoid prison is for Duda to pardon them.

Their imprisonment has turned into a huge political issue for PiS, which is accusing the new government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk of trampling on the rule of law. Thousands of party supporters protested in front of the parliament on Thursday, denouncing Tusk and calling for the release of Kamiński and Wąsik. The pair said they would go on a hunger strike.

Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of PiS and Poland’s de facto ruler for the past eight years, was at the demonstration and accused the government of “breaking the rule of law, the constitution, trampling the law.”

Top PiS politicians, who for years denounced the EU for interfering in Polish politics when they were accused of breaking the bloc’s democratic rules by bringing the justice system under political control, are now appealing to Brussels to get involved.

“For the first time in 35 years, since the fall of communism and the great victory of Poles over totalitarianism, we have political prisoners in Poland,” former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said. “Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik are victims of the political revenge of Donald Tusk’s new government. I appeal to the democratic community of the West not to look passively at what is happening in Poland today.”

But, so far, the EU isn’t getting involved.