Visiting Professor Wojciech Sadurski wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post about being the target of civil defamation lawsuits by Poland’s ruling party.
The ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) is suing me for civil defamation. State-run TV is also suing me for civil defamation as well as indicting me for criminal defamation. If I lose these cases, I could face huge civil and criminal fines and hefty legal costs. Court decisions could also potentially force me to take out expensive advertisements containing apologies. All of this vastly exceeds my means. I could also be compelled by the court to abstain from commenting publicly and critically about the ruling party. And a guilty verdict in the TVP criminal case theoretically carries a sentence of up to one year in jail, though that is unlikely in practice.
I have, in short, become the target of autocrats who have weaponized the law against their opponents. Political scientists call this “discriminatory legalism.” In this respect, Polish strongman and PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has joined the company of Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. One might also include former Peruvian president Oscar Benavides, author of the immortal maxim: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
And while the legal troubles of one individual might not be of great significance, they reveal a sinister truth about what the Polish state has become since the ruling party’s electoral victory in 2015. The Law and Justice Party has attacked me because I stated in a tweet that it operates like an organized criminal group. But this is the truth. The PiS is not an ordinary political party in an ordinary democratic country; it now owns the state. It has colonized virtually all state institutions: the presidency, Parliament, the constitutional court, the civil service, state-run companies, public media — and it has dismantled nearly all major constitutional checks and balances in the process. Since the PiS only follows the will of its leader, all-important state decisions are concentrated in a single pair of hands.