The So-Called Subcommittee is a Non-Legislative Body

January 4, 2023 | Puls Biznesu

The National Broadcasting Council has taken steps to fine TVN for the report, which describes manipulations of the so-called Smolensk subcommittee. The Chairman of the Council Maciej Świrski initiated an ex officio investigation following a complaint lodged by… Antoni Macierewicz, the author and incumbent head of the said non-legislative body. The case is only in its initial phase, but it has immediately triggered a solidarity response from the free media.

What is the most ominous is the signal that the Chairman of the Council wants to “investigate if dissemination of false and unreliable information may violate the terms and conditions of the broadcasting license granted to TVN SA.” It should be recalled that the current license expires on 14 April 2024, and the broadcaster has already started the renewal procedure in advance, but it is already clear that, once again, this will be a hard case…

The report filed by Macierewicz with the National Broadcasting Council involves the tragic Smolensk disaster of 10 April 2010, so it is important to present the rudiments of law. The Aviation Law Act, which has been in force since 2002, entrusts the investigation of accidents and serious incidents in state aviation within the territory of the Republic of Poland and in Polish air space to the Committee for Investigation of National Aviation Accidents (KBWLLP). This Committee deals with military flights, is appointed by the Minister of Defense, and has quite a lot of work. The civilian fleet is investigated by a completely different State Commission on Aircraft Accidents Investigation (PICBWL), appointed by the Minister responsible for Transport. The Military Committee may also investigate accidents outside the territory of the Republic of Poland involving Polish aircraft if international agreements provide. The Act specifies that the Military Committee should be composed of specialists in aviation training, aviation technology, navigation, air traffic, air rescue, meteorology, communications, aviation law, and medicine, who are university graduates and, note this, have documented professional experience of at least five years in a given field.

After the so-called “good change,” Macierewicz would not be able to find experts in the Military Committee or the aviation circles who would be ready to forge the Smolensk attack.

Therefore, as the Minister of Defence, on 4 February 2016, circumvented the law by massively increasing the number of members of the Military Committee and establishing a subcommittee made up of his own members. Most of them did not meet the statutory eligibility conditions, especially regarding experience in accident investigation. The Act does not provide for such a subcommittee, so the Macierewicz Regulation was groundlessly based on Article 140(4). The Subcommittee could alternatively provide only technical assistance to the entire Military Committee, as is the case with subcommittees of the Sejm, whose reports are only a semi-finished product. Into the regulation, Macierewicz entered two milestones of the lie that the Smolensk air disaster was an attack: 1) the Chairman of the Military Committee cannot interfere with the work of the Subcommittee and its findings; 2) the Subcommittee presents the report to the Minister of National Defence and the Military Committee – but nothing is said about how the Military Committee approves/rejects the report. Thus, Macierewicz entrusted decision-making powers to its private institution, without a statutory delegation, that is, in violation of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Absolutely everything that the so-called subcommittee has produced over the past seven years is the findings of its members, heavily conflicted with each other. The annulment of the 2011 report prepared by the statutory Military Committee on the causes of the tragic Smolensk air disaster by the non-statutory body in 2018 was particularly tragic. Everything I have described helps to broaden the knowledge of the people evaluating Macierewicz’s request filed with the National Broadcasting Council.