Poland’s prime minister and his minister may be summoned to court as witnesses in a free speech trial. The pastor of the New Covenant Church and editor-in-chief of the Go Against the Tide TV, Pawel Chojecki, has been indicted for words he uses on the Go Go Against the Tide TV, including critical comments against the dogma of the Catholic Church and Polish President Andrzej Duda. Pawel Chojecki has also frequently criticized the Law and Justice government.
In the pastor’s trial, people associated with the National Media are acting as auxiliary witnesses. Meanwhile, correspondence between Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and his minister, Michał Dworczyk, who organized subsidies for nationalist circles associated with the Independence March and Robert Bąkiewicz, was recently revealed. In return, the nationalist circles pledged to attack opponents of the PiS government.
The emails date from the time just before the second round of the presidential election. They established the terms of a fund that later gave millions of zlotys in grants to nationalist organizations. At the time, Michal Dworczyk was said to have written, among other things:
“Matthew, as you know, I am in favor of cooperation with the National Movement, but at the moment I think these proposals are redundant. The Nationalists are already doing their thing (statements on social media and traditional media), moreover, there will be a demonstration at City Hall on Wednesday.”
In the email, Minister Dworczyk was said to have endorsed the proposal of “the deputy director of the Institute run by Żaryn” and “the promise of 5 million for the Patriotic Fund.”
And indeed six months after that exchange of correspondence, the Patriotic Fund was created. And that with a budget of 30 million zlotys. Organizations affiliated with Robert Bąkiewicz received about 3 million zlotys in 2021 and more grants the following year.
The March of Independence Association in 2021 also received more than PLN 190,000 from the National Freedom Institute for the project “National Media/Warsaw – a civic local portal.”
Interestingly, the man who organized the group reporting Pastor Chojecki to the prosecutor’s office is a journalist for the National Media. Is this a coincidence? Or part of the Nationalists’ cooperation with the Law and Justice government? This matter should be clarified by the court.
Pastor Pawel Chojecki commented on the situation as follows:
“It is a political scandal that the prime minister with his advisor, Mr. Michał Dworczyk, for heavy millions, is preparing an environment for himself for a political fight – with taxpayer money he is building himself a party base to fight another party. And there is a high probability that we, by criticizing Law and Justice since 2017, are in the area of interest of the Polish government, which wants to punish us in some way for having the courage to criticize the government.”
Who really is pastor Paweł Chojecki?
