The president of Poland’s Supreme Court received postcards telling her to “f*** off” in a scheme apparently dreamed up by fellow judges angry at her opposition to the government’s judicial reforms.
According to a report by the Onet news portal, several judges set up a WhatsApp group in which they discussed how to attack judges who don’t support the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party’s sweeping changes to the judicial system. The idea of sending postcards with vulgar messages to Supreme Court chief Małgorzata Gersdorf originated with Konrad Wytrykowski, a judge who was recently appointed to the Supreme Court’s disciplinary branch, according to screenshots of the discussions obtained by Onet.
Wytrykowski denied being part of the online group and of being behind the idea. “There was never such a situation, it’s nonsense,” he told Onet.
Gersdorf said she has received at least three vulgar postcards. “If it’s true that this was an idea of a current judge on the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court, that would be terrible,” she said.
The online group also included former Deputy Justice Minister Łukasz Piebiak, who resigned on Tuesday in the wake of an Onet report that he had colluded with an online troll to attack judges opposed to the government’s changes to the court system.
Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro demanded that Piebiak, who is also a judge, resign, and also fired another judge embroiled in the scandal from his job in the justice ministry. Both of the fired judges are already back at work in the judicial system.
“As soon as I obtained information that judges employed in the justice ministry could be violating standards I took the decision to remove them,” Ziobro told the right-wing Radio Maryja.”There is no acceptance for this kind of behavior.”
On Thursday, the Polish National Judicial Council said it fired Tomasz Szmydt, who worked for the council’s legal department and was also part of the WhatsApp chat group. He is also the husband of Emilia Szmydt, the blogger who coordinated attacks on judges with Piebiak.
However, the fuss over the reports hasn’t died down, and the opposition is calling for Ziobro to be fired as well. The online chats showed Piebiak writing that the attacks were certain to please “the chief” — without spelling out who that person is.
Grzegorz Schetyna, leader of the opposition Civic Platform party, demanded that Ziobro be held to account for what was happening in his ministry. The opposition is also proposing legislation to split the jobs of justice minister and prosecutor general — both posts are held by Ziobro. Combining the two posts was one of the first changes introduced by PiS when it won power in 2015.
“It can’t be that the justice minister, a party politician, is using the prosecutor’s office to realize party politics,” Schetyna told reporters. “Today there is the absurd situation that Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro is going to be a judge in his own case.”
Protests are being held outside Warsaw’s Supreme Court and other Polish courthouses.
So far Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of PiS and Poland’s de facto ruler, hasn’t commented on the affair, but Piotr Müller, a government spokesman, denied that Ziobro was aware of what was going on in the ministry.
Referring to the postcard idea, he told Polish television that the case is being investigated and “if such things happened, obviously they don’t meet the ethical standards of a judge.”
“There is no free pass,” he added. “This isn’t why we are reforming the justice system.”
Poland holds a general election on October 13.