KOD was formed after Law and Justice won parliament election. In opposition to several actions taken by the governing party, Law and Justice, which in October 2015 became the first party in post-communist Polish history to control an absolute majority of the seats in the Polish Parliament, with a PiS-backed candidate, Andrzej Duda, winning the presidential elections just a few months earlier. The primary impetus for the formation of KOD was the Parliament’s enactment of a law on 26 November 2015 purporting to invalidate the prior Government’s appointment of five judges to the Polish Constitutional Court and the nomination of new PiS-affiliated judges to replace them. Since then the organisation has opposed and reacted to any actions taken by the government or President Andrzej Duda which were deemed unlawful, undermining democracy, limiting civil liberties or going against European principles.
Activity
On November 26, 2015, the members of KOD wrote an open letter entitled “A Letter of the Citizens of the Constitutional State to Andrzej Duda, the President of Poland” asking him to swear in three of the five judges to the Constitutional Court. KOD argued that those three, although not the other two, were duly elected by the previous parliament. As the disagreements between the governing party and the Constitutional Court continued, KOD called for protests against what it perceives as a breach of the Constitution in violation of democratic norms and the constitutional separation of powers between the legislature, executive branch, and judiciary. The former leader, Mateusz Kijowski, left the organisation in 2017 after being accused of appropriating 121 thousand złoty..
Demonstration, which was estimated by “Der Spiegel” and “Le Monde” to include 50,000 demonstrators, and at between 17,000 and 20,000 people by the police, took place in front of the headquarters of the Constitutional Court in Warsaw on December 12, 2015. Parallel demonstrations were also held in other major Polish cities, including: Poznań, Szczecin, Wrocław, Lublin, and Bielsko-Biała.
On January 9, 2016, there were demonstrations on the "Free Media" in 20 cities in Poland.
On January 23, 2016, 40 cities and towns in Poland saw protests about "Defense of Your freedom".
A demonstration with 70,000 people was held in Warsaw on 27 February; it was called "We, the People".
A demonstration under the theme "We are and will remain in Europe" took place on May 7 in Warsaw and was estimated to gather up to 240,000 people by City Hall.
