Warsaw, 11 January 2024 (dpa/MIA) - Tens of thousand supporters of Poland's conservative opposition demonstrated against new Prime Minister Donald Tusk's centre-left government as political tensions soared following a dramatic stand-off at the presidential palace earlier this week.

The predominantly older supporters of the nationalist conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) gathered in front of the parliament building in Warsaw on Thursday evening before continuing on to the seat of government, waving Polish flags and placards reading "This is Poland, not Tusk's country."

According to estimates by Warsaw's city administration, 35,000 people took part in the protest, while a PiS spokesman put the number at almost 200,000.

"This is not a Polish government," longtime PiS party leader Jarosław Kaczyński told the demonstrators, repeating a frequent accusation that Tusk, a former European Council president who has vowed to mend ties with Brussels, is a puppet of EU heavyweight Germany.

The "Protest of Free Poles" was organized by the PiS populists who were voted out of office in October. It was originally intended to voice anger at the restructuring of the public media system.

Tusk's government, which took office in mid-December, has begun reorganizing the TVP television channel, Polish radio and the PAP news agency - all of which the PiS had steadily brought under its control during its eight years in power.

However, the arrest this week of two former government ministers with the ousted PiS party who were sentenced to two years in prison on corruption charges shifted the focus of the demonstration.

The arrest of former interior minister Mariusz Kamiński and his deputy Maciej Wąsik has driven Poland to the brink of a constitutional crisis.

The two politicians were arrested on Tuesday and taken to prison after seeking refuge with President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, in the presidential palace.

The PiS describes the two as "political prisoners" and Kamiński has gone on hunger strike in prison.

Duda announced shortly before the start of the demonstration that he would try pardoning the pair for a second time.

Their conviction was over an affair uncovered in 2007, in which the anti-corruption agency, then headed by Kamiński, was said to have deliberately orchestrated a corruption case in order to discredit the then agriculture minister.

In 2015, immediately after the PiS came to power, Duda pardoned Kamiński and Wąsik in a controversial decision.

Last June, Poland's Supreme Court overturned their pardons, as the appeal proceedings were still ongoing at the time Duda issued them.

Both then had to face trial again. At the end of December, the Warsaw District Court sentenced them to two years in prison.

PiS leader Kaczyński called on the demonstrators to hold short protests in front of the two prisons where Kamiński and Wąsik are being held.

Photo: EPA