I don’t have the heart to explain all the “lustration” shenanigans in Poland so I will just throw out a few comments for those who have been following it, but perhaps not that closely, and perhaps relying on English language sources. Unsurprisingly, the lustration law was found to be largely unconstitutional on Friday by the Constitutional Tribunal. Before it deliberated, Lechosław Kaczyński claimed that its members should themselves undergo lustration because they might be biased. Its members have undergone lustration, as Kaczyński well knows. In a last minute attempt to pervert the course of justice a PiS deputy, Mularczyk, dug up two files from the IPN archives which purported to show that two of the Tribunal’s judges had worked with the secret services. One of the judges was in the secret police files precisely because he had flatly refused to co-operate. The other’s entry dated from shortly after Poland overthrew communism. Mularczyk (who was acting on the orders of Ludwik Dorn) may face criminal charges. This single action is possibly the strongest argument against the lustration law: it is wide open to political manipulation and abuse. The two judges had to be removed from the proceedings.

Unusually, this attack on the judiciary was described by both Gazeta Wyborcza and Dziennik as an attack – normally one paper can be relied on to say the opposite of the other. Luckily for the government, the tabloids were more obedient. Fakt asked rhetorically: How can we trust the judges? GW responded with a survey showing the vast majority of Poles trust the Tribunal. Flunky government intellectuals have taken the opportunity to ask the question: what do we need a Constitutional Tribunal for anyway? failing to follow it through to its logical extent with: “what do we need a constitution for?”

Worryingly, the judges in the tribunal urged that there be no delay in publishing their decision. (It only becomes law when published in the “Dziennik Ustaw” or daybook of law.) Surely they did not think that the government would be so underhand as to delay publication? But that would be openly flouting the principle of separation of powers: an attack not just on individual, named judges, but upon democracy itself. They did think so and they were right to be worried. The government is delaying publication. It’s all a question of timing.

Dziennik and TVN (a television station) are saying that by May 15th you must state whether you worked with the secret services or not. This is untrue. The law requires that you comply within 30 days of being informed by your employer of your duty to do so. For some this period has already elapsed. Others used delaying tactics: you have to be informed by registered post and if you refuse to accept any registered post from the postman (instead collecting it within two weeks from the local post office after receiving a second notice of delivery) this can buy you quite a lot of extra time. So a friend of mine, for instance, has until May 23rd to comply but there is a good chance that despite the government’s abuse of democratic procedures the law will be definitively struck down before then. To such pathetic levels of civil disobedience has Poland been reduced by the Kaczyńskis’ spiteful paranoia.

No winged missive has issued from the nine mighty citadels of the Three Monkeys Empire HQ in the hills around Bologna yet so my thirty day clock has not even started ticking yet. Perhaps my editor, like the IPN, is biding his time…

This just in:
In the end they did publish the court’s decision on May 15th. They needed reminding that such decisions take precedence over any other legislation in the queue for official publication. But it is to be expected that the Kaczyńskis would be somewhat ignorant of the law. (That’s supposed to be ironic: one or both of them has a PhD in the subject.)