The National Electoral Commission rejected PiS's financial report for 2023. PiS politicians comment

On Monday The National Electoral Commission rejected PiS's financial report for 2023. The head of the National Electoral Commission, Sylwester Marciniak, informed about the right to file a complaint against the National Electoral Commission's decision to the Supreme Court within seven days. He added that Supreme Court should consider this complaint within 60 days. PiS politicians commented on the Commission's decision.

Former prime minister, PiS MP Mateusz Morawiecki in a post on platform

Head of the PiS club Mariusz Błaszczak he assessed that “the only purpose of taking away our subsidies is to increase our chances in the presidential elections.” He threatened that “all those responsible for this lawlessness will face the consequences.”

PiS spokesman Rafał Bochenek also commented on the NEC's decision. “The decision of the political appointees in the National Electoral Commission of the current coalition on December 13 shows that the government's plan is to eliminate the only real opposition in Poland through illegal, administrative actions. They know that they will not win democratically and honestly, which is why they break the law and act using the fait accompli method. In the situation that has been created, it is difficult to talk about fair presidential elections in Poland. Everything indicates that this is an element of preparation for fraud in the upcoming elections of the head of state,” X wrote on the platform.

“The decisions in question aim to introduce an autocratic system in Poland, controlled personally by Tusk. It has nothing to do with democracy and political pluralism. It is a denial of the standards that apply in the civilized world,” he added.

PiS MEP, one of the party's potential presidential candidates, Tobiasz Bocheński, said that the “despicable” and “targeted at PiS finances” decisions of the National Electoral Commission “are a mixture of fear – of defeat in the presidential elections – with the authoritarian desire to destroy the opposition.” “We will beat them anyway and 'Donald will be furious',” he said.

In reaction to the decision of the National Electoral Commission, a PiS MP and former Minister of State Assets Jacek Sasin he asked in turn: “Why compete honestly in elections when you can illegally cut off your biggest competitor from financing?” “This is what a fighting democracy looks like. One that fights against the principles of democracy,” said the PiS politician.

PiS MP Zbigniew Bogucki, commenting on the National Electoral Commission's decision in a conversation with a TVN24 reporter, said that this decision is “actually a continuation of the attack on democracy.” – Because it's not an attack on Law and Justice. I would like to remind you that our party was supported by 7 million 600 thousand Poles and if you want to illegally eliminate the largest party, which is also the largest opposition force in Poland today, we are simply dealing with an attack on democracy and in fact this perspective of the presidential elections is extremely important here – he said.

– Donald Tusk he sees that it will no longer be the case that his candidate or himself will win these elections, so he will look for ways that – in short – will make it difficult or largely impossible to run an election campaign. We are definitely not giving up, we will definitely not give up, we will fight legally, but we will also ask Poles to support Law and Justice, and thus support democracy, which means that there will be equal opportunities for there to be political pluralism, he declared.

The National Electoral Commission had previously rejected reports including: PSL and the Congress of the New Right for 2013. The resolution of the National Electoral Commission of December 22, 2014 shows that the reason for rejecting the report was the action of the PSL district board in Sandomierz, which “made and implemented the decision to collect the party's funds outside its bank account.” According to the National Electoral Commission, the People's Party did not include PLN 17,498 in their report, and in 2013 they reported total revenues of PLN 8,523,460.

The National Electoral Commission questioned the KNP report because the party's explanations and the financial documents attached to them showed that part of the expenses were covered in cash from the New Right activists' own funds, and then the money was returned from the party's funds. According to the commission, this happened several times, for amounts ranging from several dozen to several hundred zlotys. In one case, it turned out that a KNP activist spent PLN 640 more than he received from the party. Moreover, the National Electoral Commission pointed out the confusion and ambiguities in the list of payments to the party. According to her, the documents provided by the KNP do not indicate, among others: clearly who paid the money and who was just an intermediary.

In mid-July 2016 the committee rejected the report of Nowoczesna and the Razem party due to “violation of the Electoral Code” (Razem party for the same reason, but on a smaller scale). Both parties accepted funds from a source other than the election fund. “In the case of the Razem Party, it was an amount of ten thousand zlotys transferred directly from the party's current account, while Ryszard Petru's Nowoczesna Electoral Committee received an amount of almost two million zlotys from the party's current account,” the Supreme Court explained in a statement at the time.