Poland’s constitutional crisis deepens
Poland is engulfed in a constitutional crisis amid a standoff between Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Karol Nawrocki over the country’s top court. Last month, Chief Justice Bogdan Święcicki, aligned with the previous government’s Law and Justice Party (PiS), refused to allow a parliament-approved judge to take his seat. Then, on Friday, pro-Tusk judges announced Święcicki’s suspension and appointed Judge Anna Korwin-Protrowska to lead it instead. On hearing the news, Nawrocki dramatically turned around his plane en route to Senegal, while protesters gathered at the court. By Friday evening, Tusk had deployed riot police and defended the court’s decision. It’s the latest escalation in a string of disputes between the centrist, pro-EU prime minister and right-wing nationalist president: the court is stacked with PiS-allied judges appointed under the previous administration, which the EU ruled was no longer impartial. The confrontation risks eroding either party’s constitutional legitimacy ahead of next year’s parliamentary election.
UN deadlock dooms Western Sahara peacekeeping mission
After 35 years, the UN is scrapping its peacekeeping mission in the Western Sahara, a region that Morocco claims as its own against long-standing resistance from local militants backed by Algeria. The mission, which was due for renewal at the UN Security Council, fell apart after a diplomatic clash between the US, which favors Morocco’s position, and Russia. A US proposal would have extended the mission but scrapped any plans for a local referendum and made Morocco’s offer of “autonomy” the baseline for any resolution of the conflict. Although that proposal had strong support in the UNSC, Russia vetoed it but then failed to garner enough votes for its own counterproposal, which would have simply extended the existing mission for one year. The peacekeepers’ exit is a victory for Morocco, but the UN has warned it opens the way for fresh escalation of the conflict, which dates back to the 1970s when Spain withdrew from the area.
China benches Real Madrid games after Mbappé’s Mao comment
Chinese state media stopped broadcasting Real Madrid football games this weekend after the club’s star player, Kylian Mbappé, made comments about Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China. Last week, Mbappé said a meme superimposing his face onto Mao’s made him laugh and referred to Mao as a “dictator.” The remark drew the ire of Chinese officials, who venerate Mao as modern China’s founding leader. The fallout underscores the leverage that China’s market gives Beijing over sports. Real Madrid alone has over 127 million fans in the country. It’s also not the first time China has flexed its muscles on the sports world: In 2019, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, prompting Chinese state television to pull NBA games off the air for 18 months, costing the league as much as $400 million.
