Kaczyński, a former prime minister and deputy prime minister, told a panel of MPs on Friday that the idea to hold a postal vote seemed reasonable to him because Poland was under a strict lockdown regime at the time.
"It was an idea that I fully embraced," he said. "However, the idea didn't originate with me; it came from other countries ... But when someone presented it to me, I decided to act on it. In that sense, it became my idea."
A parliamentary commission probing the plan to hold elections by postal vote during the COVID-19 pandemic said on Friday it would tell prosecutors that crimes may have been committed by several top figures from the previous government, including Kaczyński, news outlets reported.
The commission in December began investigating steps taken by Poland's previous conservative administration to hold the 2020 presidential elections in the form of postal voting amid the pandemic.
The inquiry was launched after the lower house of Poland's parliament, the Sejm, on December 7 voted unanimously to set up a special panel to investigate suspected irregularities.
The presidential election was initially scheduled to take place on May 10, 2020, in the middle of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
The conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government made preparations for a postal ballot, arguing that it could be held safely despite a rising number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
Election monitors, opposition candidates and EU officials criticised the plan, saying the decision to change electoral law allowing for the mail vote was rushed and could prevent the ballot from being free and fair, the Reuters news agency has reported.
The plan to hold the election on May 10 through the state postal service rather than National Electoral Commission (PKW) was eventually abandoned, and the ballot was conducted via a mixed system of postal and traditional in-person voting in two rounds, in June and July, resulting in a second term for incumbent Andrzej Duda.
The current government says the preparations for the mail-in vote, including the printing of postal ballots that were never used, cost public coffers up to PLN 100 million (around EUR 23.5 million, USD 25.5 million).
The commission's chairman, Dariusz Joński, said on Friday that the panel would notify prosecutors that Kaczyński's role in formulating the plan may constitute a crime.
Joński told reporters that Kaczyński "clearly made the most important decisions about the date and method of conducting the vote, even though he was just an ordinary lawmaker."
Members of the commission said the panel would inform prosecutors that crimes may have been committed by politicians including then-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, former parliamentary Speaker Elżbieta Witek, former State Assets Minister Jacek Sasin, and ex- Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński.
Earlier this year, Kaczyński testified in a probe into suspected cases of illegal spyware use under his conservative government, which was in power from 2015 to 2023.
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Source: IAR, PAP, Reuters