Poland Seeks to Strip Ex-Premier’s Immunity Over Failed Ballot

(Bloomberg) -- Polish prosecutors have filed a request to strip former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of his parliamentary immunity as part of an investigation into alleged irregularities during preparations for the 2020 presidential election.

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The probe focuses on whether Morawiecki overstepped his powers when he ordered the national postal service to organize a mail-in vote for the election that took place in the wake of the pandemic.

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The removal of Morawiecki’s parliamentary immunity could allow prosecutors to press charges against the former prime minister, the National Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement on Thursday.

The request comes just months before the country goes to the polls again, on May 18, to pick the next president. Recent surveys showed the race tightening with a candidate of the main ruling party losing some support against a historian backed by the opposition.

Morawiecki headed Poland’s government for six years until 2023, when the nationalist Law & Justice party lost power to a pro-European Union coalition led by the current Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The ruling alliance has pledged to investigate alleged abuses of power under the previous administration, which faced censure from the European Union over democratic backsliding.

The plan to organize a mail-in ballot in 2020 election sparked criticism from the opposition and international monitors. In the end, infighting within the former nationalist coalition over the ballot’s legality foiled the attempt, forcing the government to restore regular election rules as pandemic restrictions were removed.

Morawiecki, who recently took over from Giorgia Meloni as the leader of the conservative European Conservatives and Reformists party (ECR), suggested the move is politically motivated and linked to the presidential campaign. Rafal Bochenek, a Law & Justice spokesman, dismissed the attempts to prosecute the former prime minister as “absurd.”

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