on Thursday in front of the Sejm A demonstration was held Organized Law and Justice with the slogan “Protest of Free Poles”. According to the organizers, more than 300,000 people gathered there. people. On the other hand, Warsaw City Hall estimated the number of participants to 35,000.
“Political prisoners”
PiS representatives indicated that the demonstration was a form of opposition to the way Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government was taking power in state media. The protest was also about the detention of PiS politicians Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Vesic in prison. According to PiS, they were illegally imprisoned because they were actually pardoned by the president in 2015.
The television company TVN 24 assessed that it was “a demonstration organized by PiS to promote party propaganda and to protect Kaminski and Vesic, who were convicted of breaking the law.” Meanwhile, Law and Justice politicians refer to them as “the first political prisoners in Poland since 1989” and mention Belarus in this context.
Dudek: This rhetoric makes fun of PiS
Jacek Nizinkiewicz asked Prof. about the validity of this term. Antony Dudek.
– Talking about it political prisonersComparison with Belarus is unreasonable. It was never serious at all. More than 1,500 political prisoners are serving long sentences in Belarus, the professor said. – This is shameful. I advise PiS to give up the rhetoric of comparisons with Belarus, Russia or similar countries, because it just makes fun of them, said Dudek.
The scholar said that in the last edition of his “Political History of Poland” he described what the land scandal was and how Kaminski and Wesic were convicted.
When asked whether the CBA leaders were convicted for fighting corruption, as PiS claims, Prof. Dudek said that, in his opinion, President Kaczynski, who suspects then-Vice Prime Minister Andrzej Leper of dishonesty, ordered Kaminski to the so-called ground operation. – It was an extremely unprofessional operation, but years later the court assessed it as an illegal act, and I rely on the court's opinion. I am talking about the court of first instance, said the historian and political scientist.
Prof. Dudek estimated that in 2015, President Duda was in a hurry to grant pardons. He did this because President Kaczynski wanted to have Kaminski and Vesik in the government, and prosecuting the current ministers would be a serious problem. – In order to solve this problem, Duda did something that, in my opinion, he should not have done, that is, he pardoned after the verdict of the first instance – he said.
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