Former Polish president Lech Wałęsa, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, announced Saturday his support for Prime Minister Donald Tusk amid an escalating crisis over the Constitutional Tribunal. “Mr Prime Minister Tusk, we have no choice. The homeland is in danger! I stand with you on the front line, whatever the circumstances,” Wałęsa wrote on Facebook, according to dpa / Mediafax.

The post followed Friday gatherings of hundreds of demonstrators — mainly supporters of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party — outside the Tribunal’s Warsaw headquarters. Some tried to force their way in; there were clashes with police and the building was cordoned off.

Tensions rose after a one-month suspension of Tribunal president Bogdan Święczkowski and his deputy. The court’s website said Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska would take interim charge — one of the judges elected by the current Sejm whose oath President Karol Nawrocki has not yet taken, Polish media reported.

The conservative opposition accuses Tusk’s government of an illegal takeover of the Tribunal. The prime minister says the steps are needed to restore the rule of law after years of controversy under PiS (2015–2023), when European courts criticised the tribunal’s independence.

President Nawrocki cut short an official trip to Senegal and returned to Warsaw on Friday evening. On Saturday he called crisis talks with party representatives, citing a threat to internal security and alleging a breach of constitutional order.

Wałęsa, Solidarity’s leader in the 1980s and Poland’s president from 1990 to 1995, remains a symbol of the fight against communism; his public backing of Tusk is a powerful political signal for the pro-EU camp, without settling the legal fight over the Tribunal.

Source: Lech Wałęsa backs Tusk: “The homeland is in danger” (Mediafax)