Poland’s two main political camps are locked in an escalating fight for control of the Constitutional Tribunal, each claiming to defend the rule of law. In the process, they are undermining the legitimacy of the Polish state in the eyes of its own citizens, playing directly into Putin’s playbook.

The roots of the dispute go back more than a decade. In 2015, the outgoing centre-right Civic Platform-controlled parliament attempted to appoint judges to the Constitutional Tribunal for vacancies that should have been left to the incoming parliament. The newly elected conservative Law and Justice government used this controversy to intensify its efforts to pack the Tribunal with party nominees rather than independent judges.

Now back in power, Civic Platform is trying to bring new judges into the Constitutional Tribunal. But President Karol Nawrocki and the Tribunal’s leadership, both aligned with Law and Justice, have blocked several of the newly appointed judges from taking office. Last month, one of the newly elected judges ordered the suspension of the Tribunal’s president and deputy, and police were deployed to the building. Nawrocki denounced the move as a forcible takeover, while Prime Minister Donald Tusk defended it as an effort to restore the rule of law.

Moscow has already seized on the confrontation to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Poland’s institutions. On November 3, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described the intervention as a “coup”.

A decade ago, it was the conservative Law and Justice government that sought to pack the Constitutional Tribunal with party nominees, disregarding legal constraints. Today, it is the coalition of the centre-right Civic Platform and the liberal Left that is acting unlawfully. We see the main parties becoming mirror images of one another. Conservative Law and Justice is calling on its supporters to take to the streets to defend the rule of law, a slogan previously used by the liberal opposition when Law and Justice was in power. Now it is the liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk who is playing the strongman, with police carrying shields and wearing helmets deployed around the Constitutional Tribunal during the operation. He presents himself as an effective leader who gets things done, with little regard for legal subtleties and doubts raised even by some liberal-leaning experts. Against this backdrop, a photograph of Tusk reading an issue of the philosophical journal Kronos devoted to Carl Schmitt has recently circulated widely on social media. Schmitt, a theorist of decisionism, famously declared, “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”

Law and Justice’s efforts to politicise the Constitutional Tribunal pushed middle-aged supporters of the liberals in big cities onto the streets a decade ago. It seems, however, unlikely that Poles will again take to the streets in their millions to support either political bloc. The public is tired of the tug-of-war between politicians, not only because both main blocs demonstrate considerable hypocrisy when invoking the rule of law over force, but also because the fight does not speak to people’s chief everyday concerns: the cost of living and the safety of a country with an aggressive neighbour waging a hot war on its border and a hybrid and cognitive war inside the country.

What has changed drastically compared to the protests that took place a decade ago, when the main forces occupied mirror-image positions, is the geopolitical context: Russia’s full-scale war in neighbouring Ukraine, alongside its hybrid and information warfare aimed at weakening Poland’s position on the global stage.

In the worst-case scenario, this struggle over the legitimacy of state institutions could extend to elections. A precedent can be found in Romania, where, on December 6, 2024, the Constitutional Court annulled the presidential election following intelligence reports of alleged foreign interference, social media manipulation and campaign financing irregularities, and ordered the electoral process to be repeated.

What we might see in other Central and Eastern European countries, including Poland if the situation deteriorates, is, on the one hand, the liberal establishment adopting measures that override electoral outcomes, such as courts annulling elections in response to genuine foreign interference through social media campaigns. On the other hand, the opposition could become increasingly anti-establishment, effectively delegitimising the institutions of the state. The problem will be aggravated by the fact that foreign interference may be real rather than invented by the establishment.

These two opposing forces are squeezing the middle ground on which democracy depends: on one side, social media platforms controlled by foreign superpowers algorithmically manipulating the emotions of the populus and fuelling distrust in the state; on the other, the decisionism of an establishment governing in a state of exception through politically subordinated courts. Both leave less space for thoughtful civic self-determination.

A large part of the commentariat in Poland, however, still sees this dynamic as another round in the familiar two-party struggle between Civic Platform’s EU-oriented liberals and Law and Justice conservatives backed by the US. Beyond this rivalry, Russia- and China-inspired, supposedly anti-establishment radical influencers and parties, both anti-European and anti-American, seek to portray the state as a foreign occupation. The wilder the theories delegitimising the state become, the more pretexts the ruling establishment will have to delegitimise the opposition.

The danger is no longer simply that one political bloc might gain control of the Constitutional Tribunal at the expense of another. It is that, as both sides continue to undermine the legitimacy of state institutions, growing numbers of Poles may cease to see those institutions as their own. What is being weakened is not just the authority of a particular government, but the bond between citizens and the state itself.

No one could be happier about this kind of self-reinforcing dynamic, which weakens Poland’s position, than Putin.

If any healing is possible, it will not come from the existing political forces.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.