Poland’s opposition-dominated Senate is to set up an alternative commission to investigate Russian interference in Polish politics after plans by the ruling conservative camp to create a similar body drew criticism from Brussels and Washington.
The decision to set up a Commission received backing from 49 out of 98 senators, with no votes against and one person abstaining. The Senate Commission is meant as a response to a similar body created by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party in the Sejm, the parliament’s lower chamber, which sparked outrage in the EU and the US over its potential use for excluding political opponents from public offices.
Among the issues to be investigated are PiS politicians’ possible connections with Russia and importing coal and LNG gas from Russia amid the war in Ukraine.
“It is crucial for the citizens to know who represented whose interest,” reads the justification for the decision to establish a new commission.
However, in Poland, there are spies, useful idiots and bribed people, said opposition Senate Speaker Tomasz Grodzki of the centrist Civic Platform (PO).
The commission, previously set up by the PiS and criticised by the European Commission and many MEPs, was originally intended to be able to exclude from most public posts those whom its members believed had links to the Kremlin.
The law establishing that body was dubbed “lex Tusk” in Poland, as it was widely believed its main target was PiS’ main political adversary, Poland’s former prime minister and former European Council president, Donald Tusk. Tusk now again heads the Civic Platform, the party he co-founded in 2001, which has a chance to return to power after October’s elections.
While the opposition did not nominate any of its lawmakers to become members of the PiS-established commission, PiS ignored the opposition’s new commission.
As a result, the Senate commission would only consist of opposition lawmakers. PO senator Sławomir Rybicki was elected its leader.
The new body, which will operate until the end of the Senate’s term, had its first meeting on Thursday.
(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | EURACTIV.pl)
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