Kaczynski Voting
Booth Problems
Polish Election Laws May Bring Down Poland's Government
Warsaw, Poland 6 August, 2007 Poland's State Election Commission fined Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's political party so much that he may be forced to bring down his own Government to avoid payment.
The State Election Commission found, during a routine examination of post election financial statements submitted by all the political parties, that Kaczynski's Law and Justice Party had violated the law. It took money from companies and foreigners and put that money into a special bank account that the State Election Commission found. Under the Polish election law, accepting money from companies and foreigners is illegal.
When the Commission's findings were made public, Kaczynski rushed back from vacation and publicly brushed the violation off as a minor one. The issue is over only hundreds of Zloty. And besides that, Kaczynski said that his party was trying to find who donated the money and return it. Because that is difficult to do his party was not able to return that money prior to the time that it was required for them to file the financial statements required by the Polish election law.
As a result of the violation, Kaczynski's party will lose some 48 million zloty in financing from the public treasury.
But if Poland goes to early elections the decision of the State Election Commission is mooted.
Kaczynski has another option. He can appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
But Kaczynski has not been a friend of the Supreme Court. And he is the man who harshly said, "The Law is the Law." when he was trying to remove the mandate to govern of Warsaw's President Hanna Gronkiewicz-Walcz. See Polish Prime Minister Threatens Force To Remove Warsaw President
To his possible detriment, Kaczynski has gotten quite personal in his criticism of the Supreme Court. He has also put forward a bill would limit the Supreme Court and put it more under his control. See Tribunal Limits
Some commentators are of the opinion that they don't think that the Supreme Court will be very sympathetic to Kaczynski's plight and are likely to agree with him that the "Law is the Law."
Roman Giertych, leader coalition junior party member League of Polish Families, thinks that Kaczynski started the current Coalition squabbles as soon as he found that the State Election Commission was likely to rule against his party.
Andrej Lepper, leader of Samoobrona, says that he is going to file a motion to have Kaczynski's party declared illegal.
Kaczynski says that his party will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
But since he may not get a ruling in his favor and in time, he may choose to force early elections. And that may be exactly what he is trying to do now.
He can be assured support at least from the minority party SLD because the State Election Commission found that they also violated the law.
