President Duda threatens to veto Tusk budget
The dispute over the deposed leadership of the public media in Poland is escalating: Duda announces a veto against the new Tusk government's budget law. The Polish president is the last high-ranking representative of the right-wing PiS cadres to be voted out of office.
Poland's national-conservative President Andrzej Duda intends to veto the 2024 budget law of the new government of liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Duda announced this on X in the evening. He justified his move with the current dispute over the restructuring of public media following the change of power in the EU member state. "The public media must first be thoroughly restored in accordance with the law," demanded Duda.
A veto by the head of state can be overruled by a majority of three-fifths of the MPs present in the Sejm. However, the governing parties together only have 248 of the 460 seats in the Polish lower house. The conflict over the media is the most serious to date between the new government, whose parties won a majority in the October elections, and the former PiS government. Duda is their last high-ranking representative.
On Wednesday, Culture Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz fired the entire management of the public broadcasters in one fell swoop. This affected the CEOs and supervisory board members of the TV station TVP, Polish Radio and the news agency PAP. The Tusk government accuses the media of spreading party propaganda in recent years under the PiS government. International organizations have also criticized the one-sided reporting of the public media in Poland.
"Completely unlawful"
The PiS leadership around Jaroslaw Kaczynski protested, speaking of a coup d'état and an attack on democracy and freedom of the press. However, rallies in front of the television headquarters on Wednesday were not very popular. Some PiS representatives remained in the TVP building overnight. President Duda called the government's actions "completely unlawful" and a violation of the constitution. Anyone who wanted different rules for the management of the media would first have to change the relevant law, Duda told the radio station Zet.
Other media outlets called on the government to make public broadcasting truly independent. "The PiS has been robbed of its influence on TVP. It was not public television, but the television of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who treated it like his property," wrote the liberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. "Something else is more important, namely how the new government envisions the public media.
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Source: www.ntv.de
