Ministry of stupid press corrections.

When Minister Ziobro prefers to be Mr. Zbyszek

Ewa Ivanova, Gazeta Wyborcza, 20 February 2021

Link to the original publication in Polish:

https://wyborcza.pl/7,75398,26809777,ministerstwo-glupich-sprostowan-kiedy-minister-ziobro-woli.html

I read an absurd correction by Zbigniew Ziobro in ‘Rzeczpospolita’. It is an absolute favorite in the competition for the most grotesque correction of the year. And the best illustration of who Zbigniew Ziobro is as a natural person and as a person holding public functions of the Minister of Justice and the Prosecutor General.

A citizen or a minister

What is citizen Ziobro correcting? He is proving that the text contains ‘false information that I lost the case regarding the breach of personal rights filed by Judge Beata Morawiec and I have to apologize to her and donate funds to a foundation’.

And further: ‘I declare that the judge sued the State Treasury, and I was never a party to this case, so I could not lose it and I do not have to apologize to her or pay money to the foundation. Zbigniew Ziobro’.

A similar ‘declaration’ was published on Radio ZET’s website. This time, anonymous authors from the Ministry of Justice state that ‘it is not true that judge Beata Morawiec brought a lawsuit against Zbigniew Ziobro for the protection of personal rights. Zbigniew Ziobro has never been a party to such a case’. Further, the reader can read that ‘no court has assigned liability to him [Zbigniew Ziobro] for breaching anyone’s personal rights’ and that, by not being a party to the case, Ziobro ‘is in no way obliged to apologize to Judge Beata Morawiec’.

Really? Did Zbigniew Ziobro really have nothing to do with this matter; only the enigmatic State Treasury? Are the corrections and declarations truthful? Or are they misleading readers and citizens?

What do the court documents say?

Let us refer to the source documentation. In the final judgment, the State Treasury – the Minister of Justice – is clearly specified as the defendant. And according to the court, it was the minister of justice representing the State Treasury who ‘breached the claimant’s personal interest, namely her reputation’. Who is to apologize to the judge from Kraków? The verdict leaves no doubts: ‘The Minister of Justice in the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Poland apologizes to Judge Beata Morawiec, President of the Regional Court in Kraków in 2015-2017, for unlawfully infringing her reputation’.

Later in the content of the apology, we also learn about what the Minister of Justice is to apologize for, among others for creating the false impression that the dismissal of the judge from the office of president was related to criminal proceedings related to corruption.

Is Zbigniew Ziobro not the Minister of Justice? Here again the court decides clearly. Well – note – the Minister of Justice is to sign the apology to Judge Morawiec, also providing his own forename and surname. In short, the Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro, is to apologize. In this context, the assertion that Zbigniew Ziobro ‘is by no means obliged to apologize to Judge Beata Morawiec’ sounds like a poor joke.

Ziobro is not admitting to himself

It was not the anonymous State Treasury that was the party that lost the case against the judge in Kraków. It was not the impersonal State Treasury that testified in this case. It was Minister Ziobro. I was in court at that time and I still remember the face of the nervous and reddened minister. But let’s return to the sources. In the court report from the hearing on 23 January 2019, we read that ‘Zbigniew Ziobro is standing – he states that he does not have his identity card with him, aged 49, lawyer, not convicted…’.

During the testimony, Ziobro, as the defendant, refers to himself as the minister of justice: ‘I have the right to believe that, as the minister of justice, the president did not exercise proper supervision’. Therefore, he admits that he is a minister, he does not dispute that he is a party to the proceedings, but when he loses and has to apologize, he suddenly changes his front – he stops admitting that he holds the office of minister of justice and his own forename and surname. He becomes an ordinary natural person who has nothing to do with Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro.

Disinformation and vexatious litigiousness

It’s good that some media published grotesque corrections and statements produced by Ziobro and his ministry. This is the best proof that the Ministry of Justice is responsible for disinformation and misleading citizens. This means that we know the extent to which Ziobro can tolerate defeats and the extent to which he cannot bear being defeated. That he is not a man of principles, but is nervously trying to erase his failures from the media by presenting a false narrative. We know that when it is convenient, Ziobro considers himself to be the minister of justice, and when it is inconvenient, he is Mr. Zbyszek Ziobro, who is not the minister of justice and does not recognize his ministry’s achievements.

The current press law is a relic that does not suit reality. Mr. Zbigniew Ziobro and his ministry decided to take advantage of its formalism and show that every legal institution can be abused with impunity. But as a result, we also know that we are not dealing with a serious minister, but with a vexatious litigant who looks for excuses to flood the courts with dozens of absurd proceedings.

In practice, this is how Ziobro, as a minister and citizen, looks after the efficiency of court proceedings. This is how he cares about reducing the burden on Polish courts, which are already overloaded. That is why I am keeping my fingers crossed for Citizen Ziobro and his team of brave lawyers headed by Counsellor Maciej Zaborowski. Gentlemen, there is no point limiting yourselves, you should not rest on your laurels. It is not only Ziobro’s loss or apology that needs to be corrected, but also the ‘Marshall Plan’, the ‘Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact’, the ‘Maginot Line’ and ‘Balcerowicz’s Plan’ absolutely must be corrected.