The recently elected new liberal government in Poland, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, has managed to bring the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis already, despite only taking office less than a month ago. The pro-EU PM Tusk started with defunding public media, accused of allegedly serving as the mouthpiece of the previous, right-wing government.
Now, in the latest horrific stunt, Former Minister of the Interior Mariusz Kamiński and Former Deputy Minister of the Interior Maciej Wąsik were arrested and led away from the Presidential Palace in Warsaw in handcuffs. To make matters worse, the two men had also been elected to the Polish Parliament as members of the now-opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party. Ironically, the criminal charge against them is ‘abuse of power’.
While most reasonable people look at the unfolding events in disgust, with massive civilian protests erupting in Poland already, some were actually looking on with envy. Márton Tompos, a Member of the Hungarian National Assembly for the far-left Momentum Party, wrote in a Facebook post:
‘Watch out for Warsaw. What is happening in Poland right now, the same will happen here in Hungary after a change of government.’
Despite not being intended as such, this statement is actually a great deterrent against voting for the opposition, as the instability in Poland brought on by the new Tusk administration’s overly aggressive actions has shaken the confidence of foreign investors in the Polish economy already, as Bloomberg reported.
The nefarious post has also caught the attention of multiple right-wing political influencers, aligned with the governing Fidesz party in Hungary. As Dániel Bohár pointed out,
it is rather premature for MP Tompos to fantasize about using the justice system to punish political opponents, as his left-wing party is currently struggling to get above the five-per-cent parliamentary threshold in polls.
Tompos responded to the backlash by posting a montage of the negative comments he received, with the caption ‘How healthy do you think the system is which sends five propagandists to a two-sentence post about a change of government?’, apparently not understanding the implications of what he wrote.
That post has received 195 reactions on Facebook in the 19 hours it has been up, while also receiving 268 comments. Receiving more comments in reactions on a social media platform is generally a sign of public disapproval.
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