Committee for the Defence of Democracy

A KOD demonstration in Warsaw, 19 December 2015.

A KOD demonstration in Gdańsk 19 December 2015.

The Committee for the Defence of Democracy (Polish: Komitet Obrony Demokracji, KOD) is a Polish civic organization founded in November 2015 as a result of and triggered by the Polish constitutional crisis, 2015.

Mateusz Kijowski is the founder of the organization. The Committee is not affiliated with any political party; its members come from a broad range of the political spectrum, with the exception of the PiS and Kukiz'15 parties.

KOD was formed in opposition to actions taken by the governing party, Law and Justice (Polish: Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS), which in October 2015 became the first party in post-communist Polish history to control an absolute majority of the seats in the Polish Parliament and the Presidency at the same time. While the protest movement has taken issue with a number of PiS-sponsored initiatives, the primary impetus for the formation of KOD was the Parliament’s enactment of a law on November 26, 2015 purporting to invalidate the prior Government’s appointment of five judges to the Polish Constitutional Court^[1] and the nomination of new PiS-affiliated judges to replace them.

On November 26, 2015, the members of KOD wrote an open letter entitled “A Letter of the Citizens of the Constitutional State to Andrzej Duda, the President of Poland” asking him to swear in three of the five judges to the Constitutional Court. KOD argued that those three, although not the other two, were duly elected by the previous parliament. On December 3, 2015 the Constitutional Court ruled that the legislation invalidating the appointments was unconstitutional. The government did not acknowledge the decision as binding, claiming that the decision could not take effect until formally published by the government.

In the face of the Government's refusal to publish (and therefore give binding effect to) the Constitutional Court’s decision, and its refusal to swear in the previously-elected judges, KOD called for protests against what it perceives as a breach of the Constitution in violation of democratic norms and the constitutional separation of powers between the legislature, executive branch, and judiciary. The main demonstration, which was estimated by “Der Spiegel” and “Le Monde” to include 50,000 demonstrators,^[2][3] and at between 17,000 to 20,000 people by the police,^[4] took place in front of the headquarters of the Constitutional Court in Warsaw on December 12, 2015. Parallel demonstrations were also held in other major Polish cities, including: Poznań (over 2,000 people), Szczecin (over 2,000 people), Wrocław (approx. 2,000 people), Lublin (500), and Bielsko-Biała (200). Many politicians, especially Ryszard Petru, presented their critics of the government.^[5] On December 13, 2015, over 3,000 people demonstrated in Gdańsk.

The Committee declared that they will use a resistor as a symbol, like under the Martial law in Poland.^[6]

Comitee's actions were supported by several artists and intelectuals, including Agnieszka Holland, Marek Kondrat, Maja Ostaszewska, Robert Więckiewicz, Maja Komorowska, Bronisław Maj, Ewa Lipska, Jan Woleński, Jerzy Zdrada, Jerzy Vetulani and Jan Hartman.

Footnotes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Komitet Obrony Demokracji.

• Official website