AS POPULIST political parties advance their agendas in Poland, Hungary and Romania, pluralist democratic norms are being subverted, and a slide toward authoritarianism is giving way to incipient authoritarianism. The assault is focused on the rule of law and its guarantor, an independent judiciary.
In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice party, having already taken control of the country’s constitutional court and lower tribunals, has now moved to purge the Supreme Court, the final arbiter of civil and criminal cases as well as of election results. New rules mandating younger retirement ages would force out 27 of the court’s 72 justices, though some, including Chief Justice Malgorzata Gersdorf , are refusing to submit.
The rollback of Poland’s independent judiciary is the latest move reflecting the party’s overt contempt for Western principles of liberal democracy. In response, the European Union has embarked on a disciplinary process, but, shielded in the process by a similarly autocratic regime in Hungary, Poland is unlikely to suffer the pain of real sanctions. “This is the path of civil war,” warned Lech Walesa, the labor leader whose Solidarity movement was instrumental in overthrowing Poland’s communist government in the 1980s.
In Romania, where the governing Social Democratic party’s leader has been twice convicted on abuses in office, the party has struck back by attempting to water down anti-corruption laws. That represents a sharp blow to a decade of aggressive prosecutions of graft in that country, where it thrived for two decades following communism’s collapse.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...ffcabeff946_story.html?utm_term=.fc9f11be2160
In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice party, having already taken control of the country’s constitutional court and lower tribunals, has now moved to purge the Supreme Court, the final arbiter of civil and criminal cases as well as of election results. New rules mandating younger retirement ages would force out 27 of the court’s 72 justices, though some, including Chief Justice Malgorzata Gersdorf , are refusing to submit.
The rollback of Poland’s independent judiciary is the latest move reflecting the party’s overt contempt for Western principles of liberal democracy. In response, the European Union has embarked on a disciplinary process, but, shielded in the process by a similarly autocratic regime in Hungary, Poland is unlikely to suffer the pain of real sanctions. “This is the path of civil war,” warned Lech Walesa, the labor leader whose Solidarity movement was instrumental in overthrowing Poland’s communist government in the 1980s.
In Romania, where the governing Social Democratic party’s leader has been twice convicted on abuses in office, the party has struck back by attempting to water down anti-corruption laws. That represents a sharp blow to a decade of aggressive prosecutions of graft in that country, where it thrived for two decades following communism’s collapse.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...ffcabeff946_story.html?utm_term=.fc9f11be2160
