Radek Sikorski on the Week's Events in Poland
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 July 2018
⏱️ 22 minutes
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Summary
It's been a bad week for Polish democracy, with the government removing a bunch of judges from the country's Supreme Court in order to replace them with party loyalists. In response, protestors took to the streets to push back against the deconsolidation of Polish democracy. Radek Sikorski joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the week's events and the larger degradation of Polish governance of which they are a part. Radek served as foreign minister and defense minister of Poland, as well as speaker of the Polish parliament. He has also been a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and he's currently a senior fellow at the Center of European Studies at Harvard University and distinguished statesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:30.0 | Just like in Hungary, the answer to this is very simple. |
| 0:38.0 | If the opposition unites, they can win. |
| 0:42.0 | If they don't, they will definitely lose. |
| 0:45.0 | The reason the current ruling party is doing what it's doing |
| 0:49.0 | is that three left-wing parties went into the last election separately. |
| 0:55.0 | None of them made the threshold. |
| 0:59.0 | They were excluded from parliament, and that's why 38% of the vote was enough to be in majority of seats in parliament. |
| 1:07.0 | So you can never exclude political incompetence as an agent of history. |
| 1:13.0 | I'm Benjamin Wittes, and this is the LawFair podcast July 7, 2018. |
| 1:21.0 | It's been a bad week for Polish democracy with the government removing a bunch of judges from the country's Supreme Court |
| 1:30.0 | in order to replace them with party loyalists in response protesters took to the streets to push back against the deconsolidation of Polish democracy. |
| 1:42.0 | Joining me to discuss this week's events and the larger degradation of Polish governance that they're a part of is Rodyks Sokorski. |
| 1:51.0 | Rodyks served as Foreign Minister and Defense Minister of Poland, Speaker of the Polish Parliament, and he ran for president some time back. |
| 2:01.0 | He has also been a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and he's currently a senior fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, |
| 2:12.0 | as well as a distinguished statesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here in Washington. |
| 2:20.0 | It's the LawFair podcast, Episode 327, Rodyks Sokorski, on the week's events in Poland. |
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