Storm over president's plan to pardon convicted ex-minister 01.12.2005 Discussions continue in Poland over the outgoing president’s intention to pardon former deputy interior minister Zbigniew Sobotka. The latter was sentenced to 3 and a half years behind bars for links with the criminal world. President Aleksander Kwasniewski has now sent a pardon motion to the prosecutor’s office. New prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz has called on the president to drop the motion to show Poles that criminals will be penalised. Throughout Aleksander Kwasniewski’s second 5-year-long term as president nearly a thousand people have been pardoned.