Following the victory of conservative candidate Karol Nawrocki in the Polish elections, there are concerns that the election losers are trying to implement a vote recount that could flip the election. However, Law and Justice MP Kazimierz Smoliński, in an interview with news outlet DoRzeczy, says the vote recount is designed to sow doubt about Nawrocki’s victory.
He also notably says that there may be certain “legal loopholes” that enable the government to refuse to certify the vote.
DoRzeczy.pl: How would you comment on Donald Tusk’s posts and actions from recent days? Are we dealing with an attempt to undermine the results of the presidential elections?
Kazimierz Smoliński: This is a strange tactic, because on the one hand, in various speeches, the prime minister says that it is not true and that the results are fixed, and so on. On the other hand, Donald Tusk’s posts on social media contradict what he says publicly. It seems to me that this is building a certain narrative. Of course, the elections will be recognized, but at the same time, an atmosphere of doubt is being created on the basis that if Karol Nawrocki becomes president, his actions will always be questionable.
There will probably be disputes about the outcome, as we know from history, from the times of the late Lech Kaczyński, over how he died in a plane crash. I think this is an attempt to build such a narrative, so that later there will be points of reference — so that the elections can be questioned not only in Poland, but also abroad. So that we can say: “Look, there were doubts, we still have them, this choice was not entirely right, so maybe he should not represent Poland on the international stage, but someone else should go – the prime minister or the minister of foreign affairs.”
I would rather interpret it this way.
Does Donald Tusk have any legal basis for such actions?
There are none. He did when the case was in the hands of the National Electoral Commission. After all, it is a commission controlled by the parliamentary majority, the government majority, and it was they who had the ability to count votes in accordance with the electoral code. They could do so based on all the protests that were filed. They deemed most of these protests unfounded and ended the electoral process at that stage.
Then, the case went to the Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court no longer has the ability to count votes. It can only consider each protest and assess whether it had an impact on the election result. However, practice shows that the Supreme Court has never invalidated an election so far.
Can you imagine a situation where someone decides to recount these votes? The opposition could question this counting and claim that it is not certain whether someone did not add something to these votes.
There is no legal possibility of recounting the votes. The law does not allow it at this stage. In addition, most of the ballots are in commissions, in local government offices, often controlled by the current government, and they lie there until they are destroyed, in basements or warehouses.
And now there would be reservations: whether these votes were stored correctly, whether the seals are original, whether someone changed something, whether there were any irregularities in transport. That is why the law does not provide for such a procedure at this stage, because there would be too many doubts.
However, what can they do? The court will issue a decision recognizing the validity of the elections. This decision must be published in the Polish Monitor, and the government is responsible for this. And they can try not to publish this ruling, claiming that since it was not published, the elections were not formally recognized as valid. And then further legal speculations can begin — what next? Will the Speaker of the Sejm take any steps? Hołownia now says absolutely not, but this is a declaration for today. We will see what he will do. They can also try to open new legal loopholes.
The post Will Poland do a vote recount? Conservative MP says the goal is to discredit Nawrocki and potentially even refuse to validate his victory appeared first on Remix News.
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