Successful Monitoring of Candidates for Justices of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal
Mr. Barczyk has provided the Coalition with substantive information on himself and agreed to take part in the debate to be organized by the Coalition two days before the vote at the Parliament.
Professor Pawłowicz submitted the information but refused to take part in the debate.
On 2 March 2010, Mr. Barczyk withdrew. In the press release, among other claims, he asserted that this decision had resulted from a series unprecedented, political manipulations and attacks by the journalist who had been covering the election process for „Gazeta Wyborcza”.
In the statement of 3 March 2010, the NGO Coalition noted the lack of grounds for accusations advanced by Mr. Barczyk, and welcomed the withdrawal of his candidacy. The Coalition complained that the election process never saw significant interest from the public or from the media, and that the political system (even the opposition) failed to apply adequate scrutiny in the vetting process. In the opinion of the NGO Coalition, the method of election calls for improvement. In particular, more time and resources need to be devoted to verifying professional and ethical credentials of the candidates. Second, academia and the legal profession should play a larger role in the election.
On 4 March 2010, the majority in the Polish Parliament voted against the appointment of Professor Krystyna Pawłowicz as a justice in the Constitutional Tribunal. Thus, new elections are due, and there is one vacancy at the Tribunal.
If not for the monitoring, probably Mr. Kazimierz Barczyk would have been appointed to the Constitutional Tribunal. The successful effort by the NGO Coalition and “Gazeta Wyborcza”demonstrates that public scrutiny should and can be brought into the election process, and that it can have positive effects on the composition of top level judicial bodies. At the same time, we realized again that the political class, the legal profession, NGOs, and the academia in Poland need to step up and play an active role in the vetting of candidates.