Blind justice

What is the main problem facing Poland today? Is it the unresolved problem of the budget deficit and potential economic crisis? Perhaps the endemic corruption that in recent years has blighted the political scene? Or maybe the challenges involving European Union (EU) accession and the structural adjustments Poland needs to make? If you're a foreign investor, then naturally those would be high on your list. But in terms of the country's long-term future and its ability to live up to the aspirations of its citizens, then there is another issue that events of the last couple of weeks have brought into sharper focus: the rule of law. That's not just about catching criminals more effectively, it's about the sense that Poland is a civilized state where justice reigns supreme. Now, some people are increasingly questioning whether that is the case, and even raising issues of the long-term legitimacy of the Polish Third Republic.

Matters came to a head last week at the conclusion of a high-profile trial of a special riot police unit whose members were charged with the deaths of over 20 miners who were shot dead during strikes organized after the imposition of Martial Law in 1981 by the then communist authorities. The deaths, at the Wujek colliery in Silesia, for many years symbolized the worst excesses of the communist regime of the time, and the perpetrators of the shootings - both the riot police and their superiors - at the time escaped justice. Yet the court either acquitted the accused or directed proceedings be frozen against the remainder, justifying its decision on the grounds that witnesses were not credible, proof could not be adduced completely, and that moreover the accused "were only fulfilling orders in the framework of the regulations of the time."

Not surprisingly, the courtroom, filled with the widows and orphans of those murdered, was unable to conceal its anger. Apart from frustration at the impotence of the court, the most common comment was that at that point they had ceased to believe they lived in a country governed by the rule of law. To many ordinary people it remains inconceivable that a crime so publicly and profusely documented, and pored over by two successive courts, should not produce a single guilty verdict, and moreover that in its justification the court could use arguments that would not have looked out of place in a defense lawyer's handbook at Nuremberg.

This incident was not the only unsettling one in recent weeks. Consider Andrzej Lepper's election as deputy speaker of Parliament. The radical leader of the populist Self-Defense (SO) has a court record as long as his arm, and is facing charges in a number of courts on public order charges. Yet he was ceremonially elected as deputy speaker by the ruling coalition as part of a horse-trading deal to ensure Leszek Miller's election as prime minister in Parliament. New parliamentary Speaker Marek Borowski claimed Lepper was merely charged with "civil disobedience" matters, not criminal behavior, as if Lepper's anti-police antics and organization of illegal roadblocks were on a par with protests by Gandhi or Nelson Mandela.

The predictable litany in all these cases is that individuals should be presumed innocent until found guilty. That's pretty rum in a country whose judicial system manages to find innocent even those against whom no possible doubt of guilt can be raised. But it also exposed the cavalier way in which not only legal principles, but also more fundamental respect for norms and standards in public life are being bargained away in the name of political expediency.

The spread of this debilitating perception will do the country no good in the future. Such is the concern about this increasing tendency that even those politicians who over the last few years have been preaching about the unshakeable principle of judicial independence have questioned the wisdom of not having purged the judiciary 10 years ago when there was the opportunity to do so. At that time, those who doubted the wisdom of leaving communist judges in place overseeing the functioning of a liberal democracy - such as former Justice Minister Lech Kaczyński - were painted as dangerous radicals. Now many concede that the judiciary is itself is part of the problem.

The degradation of legal principles into a mere administrative fiat that can be suspended at the politician's whim feeds the tendency of judges who want to avoid passing sentence in cases that have political implications. Yet the damage to the reputation of both the law and the political class is fundamental and long lasting, and with it, is undermining the fundamental link of loyalty between the citizen and the state. In those circumstances, history has shown that it takes only one more heave for the whole rotten edifice to come crashing down, with no one willing to protect it. At this rate, no bad thing either.

Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl

Marek Matraszek