Successful Monitoring of Candidates for Justices of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal

19 March 2010. A coalition of non-governmental organizations monitored the election process for a justice of the Polish Constitutional Court. The civic monitoring led to withdrawal of the candidate initially thought to have the support of the parliamentary majority. The involvement of the press and the NGOs proved necessary for the official, parliamentary vetting process to work.

CIVIC MONITORING OF CANDIDATES FOR JUSTICES 

A joint project of:

Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
INPRIS – Institute for Law and Society
Polish Section of the International Commission of Jurists

PRESS RELEASE
March 19, 2010

Since 2006, a coalition of non-governmental organizations („NGO Coalition”) monitors elections of the justices to the Polish Constitutional Tribunal. The name of the project is Civil Monitoring of Candidates for Justices (Obywatelski Monitoring Kandydatow na Sedziow).  Until 2010, the coalition consisted of the Batory Foundation, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, and the Polish Section of the International Commission of Jurists. In January 2010, INPRIS - Institute for Law and Society, a newly established legal think-tank, joined the coalition in place of the Batory Foundation.

The NGO Coalition believes that elections to one of the key public positions in Poland should not occur without civic scrutiny. We think that the public has the right to know the ethical and professional qualifications of the candidates. The Coalition undertakes the following activities to advance an informed, fair and transparent election process:
- independent research, collection and publication of data on the candidates (e.g. filing requests for public information in government agencies that hold official records about the candidate’s career);
- we ask the candidates to answer a detailed questionnaire on their career and qualifications;our questionnaire and the answers are published on the Internet at monitoringsedziow.org.pl;
- public debates with participation of the candidates;
- we monitor the parliamentary proceedings in the election process, starting with the official hearing of the candidates before the Justice and Human Rights Commission of Sejm (the lower chamber of the Polish Parliament).

In 2006-2009, the Coalition monitored the election of several candidates to the Constitutional Tribunal.

In January 2010, we started to monitor the elections for the position previously held by Justice Janusz Niemcewicz (the Vice-President of the Tribunal), who was going to end his term in March 2010.  “Gazeta Wyborcza”, a high circulation, influential daily newspaper, covered the election by running a series of articles on the election.

In the beginning of February 2010, Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) which is the majority partner in the government coalition in Poland, and holds the office of the Prime Minister, proposed Mr.