Will Poles see the country's former strongman, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and outgoing Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki answer for their actions before parliamentary commissions of inquiry? Could the results of these inquiries serve as a basis for legal proceedings? What was unimaginable just a few months ago has become an almost certain prospect since the surprise victory in the October 15 parliamentary elections of the democratic coalition led by former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, due to be reappointed to the post on December 11 or 12.

The outgoing government has been accused of systemically violating the principles of the rule of law since 2015. The desire to hold them to account is one of the two pillars of the coalition agreement signed between Tusk's Civic Platform (liberals), the Third Way (the conservative agrarians of PSL and the center-right movement PL 2050) and the United Left. This coalition has a comfortable majority of 248 seats out of 460 in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, as well as in the Senate. Their agreement formally states: "The iniquity we have all witnessed under the governments of our predecessors must be named and legally settled. Without the resolution of [these] conditions and offenses, there can be no just and law-abiding Poland."

On November 29, the Sejm voted to set up three parliamentary commissions of inquiry into matters considered particularly symbolic. These were the aborted plan to organize presidential elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic, in a manner deemed unconstitutional, the bugging of opposition figures and judges using Pegasus spyware, and the alleged trafficking of Polish visas within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"The PiS built up a judicial system at its service, where those in power could not be prosecuted," stressed liberal MP Dariusz Jonski, who is investigating the previous government's actions. "We need to redress the balance, firstly through parliamentary means, and secondly by restoring independence to the public prosecutor's office and guarantees of independence to judges. We want to establish political responsibility where there have been clear infractions, which could lead to criminal prosecution or referral to the State Tribunal [the equivalent of the French Court of Justice of the Republic, established to hear cases of ministerial misconduct]."

Of the three commissions set up, the one in charge of the 2020 "postal elections" should have the easiest task. In May 2020, when President Andrzej Duda was up for re-election, the PiS decided to force a postal vote. Despite warnings from legal experts, the government wanted to bypass the Electoral Commission – an independent constitutional body – and entrust the organization of the ballot to the postal service, which is controlled by the government. The election was eventually postponed due to disagreements within the government majority. But the Administrative Court ruled that the prime minister had broken the law, and the Court of Auditors issued a scathing report, noting numerous infractions.

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