Tusk and Nawrocki Brawl Over Court While Brussels Picks Sides

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk went on air Saturday night and told the country there would be no deal. "In some matters there can be no compromise," Tusk said in an address to the nation, comparing calls for reconciliation to a thief demanding to keep half the contents of a stolen handbag. The address came one day ago, and it landed on top of a night that had already gone sideways in Warsaw.

President Karol Nawrocki had turned his plane around mid-flight en route to Senegal and flown back to the capital. Shortly after midnight Saturday he pushed his way into the Constitutional Tribunal and confronted judges who are challenging its leadership. A head of state, a plane diverted, a courthouse entered by force of presence. That's the rule of law as performed by the people who say they own it.

Two Men, One Handbag

Tusk's reply was a speech about the sanctity of courts, delivered by the man who runs the government that wants control of this one. "In a state governed by the rule of law, a politician cannot enter a court or tribunal and give orders or intimidate judges, even if he is the president," Tusk said. He pledged to ensure the Tribunal could operate independently and safely. Note who is doing the pledging: a prime minister, in a televised address, promising to guarantee a court's independence. Independence by executive assurance.

He called Friday's events "scandalous incidents" and said restoring calm could not mean accepting lawlessness or violence. "A democratic state has to be strong and capable of enforcing justice," he added, vowing that the rule of law would prevail over violence. A strong state, capable of enforcing. The word he reached for wasn't justice. It was enforcement.

Then came the line about treasure. "We have waited too long for the treasure of an independent, democratic Poland to be frightened into retreat," Tusk said. Poland as a vault, guarded by whoever currently holds the keys.

Brussels Weighs In

The European Commission didn't stay out of it. It said the Sejm holds the power to appoint new Tribunal judges, a position seen as lending support to Tusk. So the Brussels apparatus has now ruled on who gets to staff a national court, and its ruling happens to favour the government it works with day to day. Nobody on the street was consulted. Nobody in a Warsaw tenement or a Silesian mining town got a vote on which party's appointees sit in judgment.

What the Fight Is Actually About

Strip away the handbag metaphor and the treasure, and the dispute is simple: two power centres, a prime minister and a president, are fighting over who controls the institution that decides what the state can and can't do. The Commission's intervention confirms the shape of it. Elites in Warsaw and Brussels agree the question is who staffs the Tribunal. The question of whether ordinary people should be ruled by any tribunal of appointed judges never comes up.

Both sides invoke democracy. Both sides invoke the law. One of them turned a plane around to storm a courtroom; the other went on television to promise it would use the state's strength against him. The judges in the middle are the prize.

That's the electoral circus at its most naked. Poland votes, a government forms, a president from a rival camp is in the palace, and the courts become the battlefield where the loser of one election tries to claw back what the winner of another is trying to take. Whatever happens next, the people who clean the courthouse, drive the buses and work the night shifts will be told it was all done in their name.