The Duran Podcast - Poland PM, Donald Tusk targets opposition Law and Justice party

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Poland PM, Donald Tusk targets opposition Law and Justice party The Duran: Episode 1801

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the chaotic political situation unfolding in Poland. And we have some politicians, ex-politicians, ex-ministers, who were being provided safety by President Duda. And they had some court cases. Those court cases went away. then Tusk brought those court cases back or those charges back against them. And he went after these former politicians who were Law and Justice Party. He went after them. They were, from what I understand, they were staying in the presidential residency or with Duda.

And they actually stormed the residency. And they apprehended these guys. And now one of them is announcing a hunger strike. and just political chaos in Poland. They had issues with the budget and getting the budget passed. And, you know, Duda and Tusk, obviously, they don't get along. That's crystal clear. They don't like each other.

But the situation in Poland seems to be spiraling out of control. And, of course, we still have the blockade on Ukraine. The farmer's strikes. They're joining Germany as well. and they're blocking the passage of trucks from Ukraine and the imports of good from Ukraine. Just a chaotic situation all around. Yeah, it is chaotic, and it's also very dangerous, and it's also very sinister. And there is one person, in my opinion, who bears overwhelming responsibility for it.

And that is Donald Tusk, because Donald Tusk was elected prime minister. I mean, his coalition won the recent election. It's important to remember that law and justice still emerged out of the election has the biggest party. It still has a lot of support in Poland. There are other parties in Poland that are also nationalistic and right wing and probably closer to law and justice. So taking on a very significant part of the Polish people, Polish electorate. And he didn't need to do this. he's he's sees law and justice not as political rivals dangerous political rivals you know in terms of political conflict

he's seeing them he's treating them more like enemies enemies that must be suppressed and this is becoming very much by the way the trend in european politics i mean all those reports in germany that we've discussed before about banning the i ft for example. Similar reports, by the way, now about banning Saravagenek's party in Germany too. There are some people that are probably coming forward with those ideas. We've seen similar things happen in other places. And it looks to be, as Donald Tus, having stayed quite long of time in Brussels, has internalised all that thinking. He's come to Warsaw and he says to himself, I've got to break this party, which has been holding back. Poland's complete absorption and integration into the European system.

And I'm prepared to do it in the most authoritarian way. I'm going to start, you know, tearing up budget laws, seizing television stations, which is... The media, which is what he's already been doing. I'm going to send police into the president's office. He's residence and they're going to arrest people there. Now, as I understand it, what happened with these two people is that they were convicted in the past of an abusive process law, while there were ministers for some of the things that they did as ministers. The Supreme Court overrode or upheld that conviction and overrode President Dutis attempt to pardon them. Then law and justice, as we remember, carried out a major judicial reform.

A new Supreme Court then upheld the president's pardon. Now Tusk is saying that he's not going to pay any attention to this latest decision of the Supreme Court. As far as he's concerned, this pardon that the president enacted isn't a real pardon at all. the courts have been activated to restart that prosecution. This is the kind of thing that sensible politicians don't do. They just leave these things alone. They say, look, this is in the past, whatever these two characters did before, you know, we can forget about that.

Let's move forward with our political program. Obviously Duta is going to try and be as obstructive as he can, but we will eventually get around that. he's not going to be president of Poland forever. What we're going to do is we're going to build a basis of support. We're going to show that we've got a good program for the Polish people, an attractive one. We're going to paint the president and law and justice as being obstructive.

Instead of doing that, Tusk is coming out, making all these incredibly aggressive moves, and he's acting in a way that, frankly, is only going to hide. and exacerbate political tensions in Poland itself and potentially create a crisis there. I mean, it's destabilizing your own country so that you can implement the policies of Brussels, because that's what it amounts to. Well, that's who Tusk is. It is exactly what he does. I mean, he is at the end of the day.

He's an EU loyalist, yeah. He's an EU law. He's president of the European Council, no less. So exactly what he is. But we see the mindset that a Eurocrat brings when he is brought into domestic politics. And as I said, it's very dangerous. This is not conventional politics in any way. You can be very critical of law and justice. I am, by the way. I mean, I didn't particularly like much of what they did. We've spoken about this. many times in many, many programs. Overall, and by and large, however, yes, they did push the boundaries many, many times, but you could never say that they really went past them. They never, it seems to me, went so far as to trigger the kind of things that we're seeing now. They never sent police into the office of the president or seized television stage, and the way that Donald Tusk is doing.

Of course, he is doing it. And by the way, notice again, I mean, you know, there's always the rhetoric about law and justice, the great threat to democracy that they support, supposedly represented, the threat to the rule of law. And we see, as far as Donald Tusk is concerned, democracy is what he is and stands for. Everybody else is anti-democratic.

What he does is, by definition, democratic, even when he sends police for people to drag people out of the president's residence. And, you know, even, and he's, of course, in favour of free speech, even as he sees his television stations. So, again, you understand the kind of mindset. I mean, they're not even double standards, really, because, I mean, that's too sophisticated in some ways. The kind of people that these are, that when they're, use words like democracy and freedom speech and rule of law, they mean something totally different from what those words have historically meant and from what those words mean to people like you and me.

When they use those words, they meet it in the context of if it benefits us. It's democracy, but only if it benefits us. It's freedom of speech only if it benefits us. If it doesn't benefit us, then we have to squit. squash it. Yes, because... And they squash it in the most aggressive totalitarian, authoritarian, authoritarian way. That's how the EU operates across the board. This is, I mean, Tusk is, you want to know what it's, what it's going to be like once the EU consolidates all power. They create CBDCs. They create their EU army. Just look at Tusk right now. And that's what it's

going to be like in all of the European Union. If the EU has its way. That is exactly correct. That's exactly what it, that's exactly what it represents. Now, Poland, let me say this again, I mean, I have various people in Poland. I mean, very interested in knowing what they think about what is actually going on. Poland is a country with a long and storied history of resistance. I mean, they've resisted the Russians, they've resisted the Germans, they've resisted the communists within their own country. They, you know, this is a country where there's been, been a long history of this sort of thing. Are they going to put up with this? I'll be very interested to know. And I'll be very interested to know what some people think. I mean,

it's important to say that Tusk is not without support in Poland. I mean, there are people in Poland who are very, very up for this kind of thing, who've completely internalised the entire EU thing themselves. How many are the of that kind in Poland? Probably quite a lot. But what does the larger Polish population make of this? I'd be very interested in that. And that's an invitation, by the way, to people in Poland to come forward and tell us. I think that's the case across most of Europe.

I mean, there is a large part of the population in most countries in Europe that have internalized this EU ideology, this EU religion. they really believe that without the EU, the sun will not rise. They really do believe that. And in a way, they beg, they beg for the EU to control and rule over them. It's a weird, a weird thing to analyze and look at. But there is a large group of people in Greece and Cyprus. That's for them having more control, the EU controlling more of their lives, for them is like a comfort blanket. It's very strange, but, you know, this is where we are.

Bear in mind, I live in Britain. And, of course, we have plenty of people like that here. And those people are very, very angry about the fact that the sun is continuing to rise, even because, even in spite of the fact that we've left the EU. And, you know, they are very, very angry about it. And it's made them very, very difficult. And, well, the mindset is exactly the same. So, yes, there are people.

people like that in Poland as well. And, you know, we'll see where all this goes. But we who are not part of this cult, because essentially that is what it is, we can come forward so far still and say what this is. This is very dangerous. It is very destabilizing. It violates any concept of politics, democratic politics, as democratic politics. all its rough and tumbles and all of that was conducted. Let me see how it happens. And by the way, we talked about the EU, and this is, of course, how the EU works. We saw that before in Canada.

We see this in the United States. It's becoming pretty general across the West. We see it in Ukraine. We see it in Ukraine. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, that would be. All right.

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