Poland's current ruling party takes another step toward outright authoritarianism. They just pushed through a bill that allows them to, basically, create their own Inquisition and easily eliminate any opponents from the public life:
https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/05/27/polish-parliament-passes-bill-to-create-commission-investigating-russian-influence/Some, uhm, interesting points on how this "special commission" would be operating:
1. The ruling party would have an obvious majority in membership. The chairman would be appointed directly by the Prime Minister.
2. The bill doesn't name any specific offenses that would be considered punishable. Which means, the commission could punish people for, more or less, anything it liked.
2. The commission would have the power to ban someone from holding a public office for 10 years. Normally, this kind of punishment is restricted to court verdicts - now, this commission, which is not a court, would be able to hand out such sentences as "administrative decisions".
3. The commission's verdict cannot be appealed to any other instance, including courts. They are absolutely final.
4. The people investigated by the commission would not be granted any access to the materials the commission investigates. So, people investigated by the commission won't be able to prepare any defence.
Overall, the bill is a legal atrocity. I've heard lawyers say that there are at least 13 separate instances of that bill breaching the Polish constitution.
Note that this commission is being created a few months before the next parliamentary elections... So, it's probable goal is to attack and eliminate the most important opposition leader, Donald Tusk.
