Antoni Macierewicz

Antoni Macierewicz (2014)

Antoni Macierewicz (born August 3, 1948 in Warsaw ) is a Polish politician. From 1991 to 1992 he was Minister of the Interior in the Olszewski cabinet and from 2015 to 2018 Minister of Defense in the Szydło and Morawiecki I governments, as well as a Sejm member of the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th , 7th and 8th electoral terms .

He is one of the leading members of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) and is considered the closest confidante of Chairman Jarosław Kaczyński .

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Macierewicz studied at the University of Warsaw and graduated with a master's degree in history.

From 1968 to 1989 he was a member of the democratic opposition. He is considered one of the founders of the Committee for the Defense of Workers (in Polish Komitet Obrony Robotników , or KOR for short).

From 1989 to 1992 he was a member of the Christian National Association (ZChN), for which he entered the Sejm in 1991 . From December 23, 1991 to June 5, 1992 Macierewicz was Minister of the Interior in Jan Olszewski's government . The majority in the Sejm committed Macierewicz by resolution in May 1992 (which was later classified as unconstitutional), a list of the names of currently active members of parliament and politicians in high state and government offices who were employees of the communist-controlled secret services UB and UB during the People's Republic of Poland SB had been put together. On June 4, 1992, Macierewicz presented the Sejm's council of elders with a list of alleged former employees, from where it was leaked to the media on the same day. Under the code name “Bolek”, President Lech Wałęsa was also listed on it. That same night, a clear majority passed a vote of no confidence in the Olszewski cabinet .

Macierewicz then left the ZChN and founded Akcja Polska , in alliance with Olszewskis Ruch Odbudowy Polski (ROP) he became a member of the Sejm again in 1997, after which Macierewicz founded Ruch Katolicko-Narodowy . In the parliamentary elections in Poland in 2001 , he won another mandate as a list candidate for the League of Polish Families , but left the parliamentary group. Before the parliamentary elections in 2005 , he and Jan Olszewski founded the Ruch Patriotyczny , which only received 1.05 percent of the vote in the elections. In the 2007 and 2011 elections , he again obtained a seat in parliament via the list of the PiS . The members of the Ruch Patrioticzny joined the PiS in May 2010.

In July 2006 he was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense by Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński . In his office he was responsible for the dissolution of the Polish military intelligence service Wojskowe Służby Informacyjne, which was created in the early 1990s . In his opinion, the WSI had taken on too many officers who had started their service during the Warsaw Pact and some of them had been trained in Moscow. From October 2006 to November 2007 he was in charge of the newly created "Service for Military Counter-Espionage" ( Służba Kontrwywiadu Wojskowego ).

In July 2010, he headed the parliamentary committee, which was enforced and manned by the PiS and dealt with the investigation of the plane disaster near Smolensk . Macierewicz repeatedly expressed the conviction that the crash was due to an assassination attempt and that the truth was being suppressed in public.

During Macierewicz's tenure, the broken relationship with the European Union fell . He also fell out with President Andrzej Duda towards the end of his term in office . In January 2018 he was dismissed by the new Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and replaced by the previous Minister of the Interior, Mariusz Błaszczak . It was considered extremely unpopular, with the exception of the PiS regular voters. The personnel changes were seen as a signal from Poland to take a moderating course towards the EU.

On January 11, 2018, he took over the management of the Smolensk Commission from Kazimierz Nowaczyk .

Political positions

Macierewicz is considered anti-liberal and has repeatedly expressed criticism of Poland's membership in the EU. He was the founding editor of the “radically anti-communist and anti-Semitic ” or right-wing extremist magazine called Głos .

In a radio interview with Radio Maryja in 2002, Macierewicz is said to have declared that he considered the Protocols of the Elders of Zion , the authenticity of which, in his opinion, was valued differently, to be "very interesting" and that the theses represented therein corresponded to his experiences. On the occasion of his appointment as defense minister, the Anti-Defamation League protested the Polish government and called on Macierewicz to distance himself from his statements at the time. The spokesman for the incumbent minister described the allegations as a lie and requested apologies.

Macierewicz is (as of June 2017), after Kaczyński, the second most important ideologue of the right and very respected in the clerical-nationalist circles of the PiS. According to Tomasz Piątek and other Polish journalists, Macierewicz was surrounded by a network of pro-Russian activists for years. This is judged to be all the more unusual because Macierewicz, like other members of the government, had attracted attention through public agitation against the government of Vladimir Putin and blames the Russian government for the plane crash near Smolensk .