Poland's President Andrzej Duda said Thursday that he planned to pardon Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wasik, two former members of the ousted nationalist conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party sentenced to two years in prison for corruption.

PiS and their main political rivals, led by new Prime Minister Donald Tusk, have been fighting over whether Kaminski and Wasik should be in custody or not for years now. 

PiS' October election defeat that brought a broad coalition headed by Tusk back into power swung the scales back against the two politicians, who were originally convicted in 2015. In December, they lost an appeal and, subsequently, an arrest warrant was issued against them.

Both were arrested inside Duda's palace on Tuesday, with Tusk accusing Duda of harboring criminals and seeking to obstruct justice by inviting them there.

The next day, Kaminski said he was going on hunger strike.

After a meeting with the men's wives on Thursday, Duda said he would "launch the pardon procedure" at their request, again calling the detained PiS politicians "political prisoners."

Duda later said he had submitted a pardon request to Justice Minister Adam Bodnar.

Thousands protest reforms

The development came as tens of thousands of people waving anti-government banners and Polish flags gathered for a protest in front of the of the parliament building in Warsaw.

PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski told the demonstrators: "This is not a Polish government." 

Kaczynski and PiS often accuse Poland's returning Prime Minister Donald Tusk — who served as a European Council president in between his stints in power in Poland and then often clashed with PiS from Brussels of acting on behalf of Germany or the EU or other foreign actors, including Russia.

Kaczynski was joined on stage by other prominent PiS figures, including former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who called on party supporters to "defend Poland."

The "Protest of Free Poles" organized by the populists who were voted out of office in October was originally intended to voice anger at the restructuring of the public media system. However, the arrest of Kaminski and Wasik has shifted the focus of the demonstration.

Kaczynski called on the demonstrators to hold short protests in front of the two prisons where the politicians were being held.

Who are Kaminski and Wasik?

Kaminski was interior minister in the national conservative cabinet of Mateusz Morawiecki from 2019 to 2023. Wasik, his deputy, was his right-hand man in the ministry.

They were convicted of abuse of power for actions in 2007 when they were part of a previous PiS-led government. Soon after their conviction in 2015, though, PiS won general elections in Poland — Duda issued them both with pardons, and they returned to politics. 

But Poland's Supreme Court later ruled that the pardon had not been valid because it was issued before the appeals process was exhausted. 

With PiS losing last October's elections and the rival coalition headed by Donald Tusk now back in power, the government in Warsaw again sought to put them in custody. The pair lost an appeal in December, prompting the appeals court to order their arrest.

Back-and-forth as power changes hands in Warsaw

The conflict over Kaminski and Wasik is a reflection of the longstanding tensions in the country between the pro-European Union factions spearheaded by Donald Tusk and the more nationalist PiS. 

Both groups tend to look to undermine and undo each other's prior legislation and reforms on taking power.  

PiS also made changes to public broadcasters during its last stint in power, with Tusk and his allies arguing that their recent intervention was an attempt to rectify those alterations.

The previous PiS government also introduced reforms that critics say undermined the independence of the courts and threw the judicial system into disarray. 

Tusk's new government is trying to reverse those reforms in order to release billions in funds frozen by the European Union in froze in response to the policies of the previous government.

dh/msh (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)