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[ClosingADoor]

Poland's President Duda vetoes judicial reforms after protests
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40703909

Protesting works. Good job by the Polish people who went into the streets.

 

[YourMaster]

are you fucking kidding me? a bill to toss out the supreme court and replace them with executive-appointed candidates? that alone is reprehensible in anything even pretending to be a democracy

In many countries the supreme court is appointed by the top executive (the US for example).

And no, Poland isn't a regular democracy but one plagued by corruption. If the current judges are appointed by a corrupt government in a sneaky way, and the population votes to get rid of the government in an unprecedented way - When is the last time Poland ever had a party with an absolute majority? - than surely there must be some way to get rid of those judges. Same goes for the judges in Venezuela as well.

The difficulty is, with corruption so wide spread, how do we know the new government is any better and won't abuse their power. Still, overall in such a situation I think it would be best if it is very easy for a new government to prosecute the previous one for their crimes, and that any entrenchment of power should be avoided.

 

[CTLance]

Yessssssssssss. Congrats to the Poles. Dodged one motherfucker of a bullet there.

 

[Peru]

Poland's President Duda vetoes judicial reforms after protests
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40703909

Protesting works. Good job by the Polish people who went into the streets.

Constitutional crisis upcoming though?

 

[chaobreaker]

Was this ultimately a self-serving move by the President or am I reading this news wrong?

 

[Kill Your Masters]

Poland's President Duda vetoes judicial reforms after protests
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40703909

Protesting works. Good job by the Polish people who went into the streets.

Nice.

I felt bad reading the posts from Poland GAFers here tonight, and originally coming from eastern europe (Balkans) I know how fucked up our politicians and politics in general are and that shit makes me rage, but this sounds like good development? Is there a chance this still can go bad for now?

Also all this sounds like eastern european elites want to hop onto the oligarchy train when they look at Russia.

 

[Ben Ghazi]

Was this ultimately a self-serving move by the President or am I reading this news wrong?

99% chance it's rhe former. We're not out of the woods yet.

 

[CassSept]

Nice.

I felt bad reading the posts from Poland GAFers here tonight, and originally coming from eastern europe (Balkans) I know how fucked up our politicians and politics in general are and that shit makes me rage, but this sounds like good development? Is there a chance this still can go bad for now?

Also all this sounds like eastern european elites want to hop onto the oligarchy train when they look at Russia.

Hell knows. The last two weeks were a mess, even before all the major protests started in the latter half of last week. Several acts were either withdrawn or repealed, which is inconsistent with how the government worked for the past 1.5 year (relentlessly pushing onwards ignoring any and all opposition). At first I thought this might have been a political game, muddying the waters to cover other major reforms but now I'm befuddled. Government's actions over the past two weeks were very chaotic and the parliament is currently on vacation, so now we wait to see what happens.

What's especially confusing is that it's completely in opposition to their propaganda. Government media touted the acts as huge successes that will end once and for all post-communism and derided everyone against it as pawns of the old system and pedophile supporters. Now that the president actually did veto the reforms it's curious how they will spin that one.

Edit: Also, an article on astroturfing campaign that probably took place during the weekend Basically, an orchestrated campaign to convince people that THE PROTESTERS were incited by some foreign power funded by Soros. Obviously, right-wing facebook fanpages took the bait outstandingly well.

 

[Mr_Zombie]

In many countries the supreme court is appointed by the top executive (the US for example).

Yes, but at no point were all judges dismissed only to be replaced (all of them) with those appointed by a single executive. That was the major problem with the bill, why it was called unconstitutional. That various judges are appointed in different time frames (

When is the last time Poland ever had a party with an absolute majority?

The problem is that even though the ruling party constantly repeats "we have the majority so we're doing what the sovereign wants us to do", you have to keep in mind that only 37% people (out of those who even went to vote) voted for this party. That they achieved the majority in the Sejm is by pure luck, due to the D'Hondt method. It's hilarious (well, not really) that even though two out of three parties that didn't get into the Sejm were leftist, their votes were passed to the far-right party. So the left-winging citizens got really fucked, because not only do they not have their representation in the Sejm, but their failed votes boosted the party they despise.

The difficulty is, with corruption so wide spread, how do we know the new government is any better and won't abuse their power.

They aren't. They are even worse. They are changing laws - lower demands - so that their people can get positions in state-owned companies. Right now they are planning to change requirements for ambassadors. Currently foreign ambassadors are required to know (and have this documented) two foreign languages; the ruling party wants to change it so that ambassadors have to prove that they know at least one foreign language. Why lower standards? Because they can.

As I said previously, the previous government wasn't saint either; they did a lot of things wrong that made people angry and make them abandon the party. But this one, this one has the mentality of "we won, so now fuck off, we can do whatever we want!".

 

[Ben Ghazi]

The problem is that even though the ruling party constantly repeats "we have the majority so we're doing what the sovereign wants us to do", you have to keep in mind that only 37% people (out of those who even went to vote) voted for this party. That they achieved the majority in the Sejm is by pure luck, due to the D'Hondt method. It's hilarious (well, not really) that even though two out of three parties that didn't get into the Sejm were leftist, their votes were passed to the far-right party. So the left-winging citizens got really fucked, because not only do they not have their representation in the Sejm, but their failed votes boosted the party they despise.

I voted for Razem (the new Left party), because fuck Miller and his SLD (the old "Left" party). I do hate the PiS more but am aware of what the SLD government looked like.

 

[YourMaster]

Yes, but at no point were all judges dismissed only to be replaced (all of them) with those appointed by a single executive. That was the major problem with the bill, why it was called unconstitutional. That various judges are appointed in different time frames.
[...]
As I said previously, the previous government wasn't saint either; they did a lot of things wrong that made people angry and make them abandon the party. But this one, this one has the mentality of "we won, so now fuck off, we can do whatever we want!".

So, what would be your solution. In this specific case or in general? How can you go from being a corrupt country to a country with hardly any corruption? If you have government patsies as judges or in the media, then what?

If you say this government is just as bad or worse, and suppose they succeed and replace all the judges with their own judges, and those judges are indeed bad, what should the next government do? Keep them all? Keep half?

 

[Mr_Zombie]

I have no idea. But doing anything unconstitutional, even if it is done in good faith, is certainly not the right thing to do because one day it will backfire (e.g. the next government could do the very same thing saying that "X did it, so we can do it too"), or the next government could easily revert the dissmision by saying it was against the law. That's why you need a constitutional majority to perform actions like that - by having a constitutional majority you can be sure that the great majority of civilians approve your actions, not just (like in this case) 37%.

Also, in this case the case isn't really about corrupted judges. While yes, there might be few bad apples there, but most of the Supreme Court judges are respected. Or at least were until the party started spreading their propaganda: "they think they are above others", "they are the relict of the Polish People Republic", "they are thieves" (there are two cases where two judges stole something, one stole a pair of jeans and the other a pendrive; the one who stole jeans is retired now and has dementia) etc.

The problem with the proposed bill is that it doesn't fix any problems with the judgement system, it just replaces people and calls it a day.

 

[Axial]

Co się tam dzieje? (((

Brak dekomunizacji wymiaru sprawiedliwości, oto co się dzieje.

The problem with the polish judiciary system is that it is still deeply rooted in its communist authoritarian past and hence prone to corruption, nepotism and also favoritism for the former "nomenklatura" of elites and public powers which ran Poland under Soviet occupation. Judges are a self-serving clique often out of touch with the problems of ordinary citizens. This is a view shared by many Poles, not only supporters of the current Government, and one of those talking points that quickly gets swept under the rug or simply omitted during discussions by westerners about the transformation process in Poland and the so called "Round Table Agreement". People automatically assume we have a matured, competent and independent judiciary like in other western democracies with checks put in place to prevent corruption, which in reality is just total bs and still after all these years needs to be properly addressed. There have to be oversight mechanisms put in place to hold judges and judiciary staff responsible for their conduct as government officials, but in all fairness, replacing people by way of legislation and hoping for the better isn't the right way to go.

 

[Quixzlizx]

In many countries the supreme court is appointed by the top executive (the US for example).

Wrong. They are nominated by the President, but need to be ratified by the Senate.

 

[ultratruman]

Amazing, Duda grew a conscience. Don't try and tell me history doesn't often come down to the actions of single men.

Now let's see his replacement bill.