EXCLUSIVE: Police, Judges And ‘Coup’ Allegations: Poland’s Government Erupts Into Chaos

The government of Poland is currently undergoing a constitutional crisis that prominent Polish legal figures called a coup during exclusive interviews with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Riot police surrounded Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal on Friday as a bitter dispute over the court’s leadership erupted into accusations of a government-backed coup, prompting the country’s president to abandon an overseas trip and return to Warsaw, according to the Warsaw Metropolitan Police and the Polish presidency. The confrontation has intensified an ongoing power struggle between Poland’s liberal-centrist governing coalition and its conservative opposition, with both sides accusing each other of violating the country’s constitution.

The Constitutional Tribunal is Poland’s highest constitutional review body, responsible for determining whether laws and government actions comply with the country’s constitution, according to the Polish Constitution.

The crisis erupted after newly appointed Constitutional Tribunal Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska announced the suspension of Tribunal President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice President Bartłomiej Sochański, assuming control of the institution amid a heavy police deployment, according to Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita.

“It is no more a political discussion or a legal discussion, as the police force has been implemented by the government to take over the building and the premises of the court and to install newly elected judges that were not sworn in by the president,” Jerzy Kwaśniewski, a Polish attorney and president of the conservative Ordo Iuris Institute, told the DCNF.

At the center of the confrontation is a disagreement over whether judges elected by Poland’s parliament can legally assume office without taking their oaths before the president.

Nawrocki refused to administer oaths to several judges elected by the parliamentary majority, prompting them to take oaths in parliament instead, according to the Polish government.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk maintains that the parliamentary appointees were legally elected and that the Tribunal’s existing leadership unlawfully prevented them from carrying out their duties.

Tusk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.