Polish lawmakers arrested inside Presidential Palace, as showdown between new and old ruling parties intensifies

Two populist Polish lawmakers were dramatically arrested on corruption charges inside the country’s Presidential Palace on Tuesday, prompting one to start a hunger strike and escalating a heated confrontation between the country’s new government and its former ruling group.

Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik, both MPs in the ousted authoritarian group Law and Justice (PiS), were detained Tuesday after seemingly taking refuge inside the Warsaw palace of President Andrzej Duda.

They were sentenced to two years in prison last month, and banned from sitting as MPs for five years, over corruption charges relating to PiS’ original term in office, between 2005 and 2007.

But that sentencing had infuriated the PiS-aligned president and many within the party, because Duda had previously pardoned the pair before their conviction. The Supreme Court had ruled the pardon was void but the Constitutional Tribunal, another body filled with PiS loyalists, has said it should stand.

The case, and the dramatic events it caused at the Presidential Palace, highlights a bitter struggle between the new centrist government, led by Donald Tusk, and PiS, the party that oversaw an illiberal takeover of Poland’s institutions before being defeated in October’s election.

Tusk has been combative in his early efforts to redress the takeover of public institutions and the degradation of the rule of law, a trend under the PiS government that alarmed international watchdogs and fueled a years-long standoff between Warsaw and the European Union.

But PiS has reacted furiously, with Duda publicly criticizing his prime minister’s moves and making clear he will frustrate huge swathes of Tusk’s program.

On Wednesday Kamiński called his conviction an “act of political revenge” and said he would go on hunger strike in protest, in a statement reported by Polish news agency PAP. The pair have essentially ignored their convictions and have attempted to sit in Poland’s parliament despite being barred from holding public office.

Duda added in a Wednesday speech that he is “deeply shocked that people who are … honest, who have always fought for a free Poland, have been locked up in prison. They are in prison, while a number of people with corruption charges are walking free.”

But Marcin Kierwiński, the new government’s Interior Minister, said on X after their arrests: “Everyone is equal before the law.”