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Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Poland’s main rightwing opposition, has accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government of driving a longtime aide to her death, escalating their decades-long political battle.
Barbara Skrzypek, a key figure in Kaczyński’s circle who represented his Law and Justice (PiS) party in real estate projects, died at the weekend, three days after being questioned in a corruption investigation. The official cause of death was listed as “unknown”.
Kaczyński on Monday convened a news conference in front of the Warsaw public prosecutor’s office, where he called Skrzypek “the first fatal victim” of the Tusk government’s alleged persecution of opposition figures.
Skrzypek had advised Kaczyński even before he co-founded PiS in 2001. Ranked by Polish media as one of the country’s most influential women, Skrzypek was once described by Kaczyński as “the mother of many a major political career”.
She had been questioned as a witness last Wednesday in an investigation into a skyscraper project that was developed by a PiS-linked real estate company called Srebrna but never built.
Skrzypek, who was 66, acted as a representative of the Lech Kaczyński Institute, a political foundation established in memory of Kaczyński’s late twin brother. The foundation was the main shareholder of the real estate company, and Skrzypek was also a member of the Srebrna board. She had denied any wrongdoing.
“We will not leave this matter. We will fight to the end,” Kaczyński said, alleging that Poland “no longer has the rule of law or democracy”.
Kaczyński and Tusk have been embroiled in a bitter feud for more than two decades, their rivalry intensifying after a 2010 plane crash in Russia that killed Lech Kaczyński, who at the time was Poland’s president. Kaczyński repeatedly accused Tusk — who was prime minister at the time of the crash — of complicity in an alleged Russian cover-up.
Kaczyński claimed on Monday that Skrzypek “could not breathe” after a five-hour interrogation by a prosecutor he alleged was “an extreme, aggressive person who talks about revenge”.
Warsaw’s regional public prosecutor’s office denied the allegations, insisting that the questioning was conducted in a “friendly” atmosphere.
The prosecutor’s office said that it was ready to sue people making a “direct connection” between her death and her interrogation “to protect the good name of the institution and the case officer”.
Poland’s outgoing president Andrzej Duda — a PiS nominee — has demanded a full investigation into whether Skrzypek’s rights were upheld during the interrogation. He also called for amendments to the law that allegedly barred Skrzypek’s lawyer from attending the questioning.
The controversy over Skrzypek’s death comes ahead of presidential elections in May that Tusk’s coalition must win in order to unblock a reform agenda largely put on hold by Duda and PiS-appointed judges who pack the country’s top courts.
