A Reflection on the Polish President

I am in Holland for a few days and awoke to the news that the President of our temporary country was killed in the plane crash this morning, along with several cabinet members and dignitaries.

Now, I realize most people could not pick Lech Kaczynski’s name off a list, but he has been involved in Polish Politics for 30 years. He earned his PhD in Gdansk.

He was an advisor to Lech Walesa during the Solidarity strikes and a member Solidarity movement in the 80s and 90s. He was even jailed during martial law for his political activity. He was Vice Chairman of the Solidarity Party and a major player in Lech Walesa’s Presidential cabinet in the early 1990s.

He broke ties with Walesa several years ago. He and his twin brother formed their own political party- Law and Justice in 2001. He was elected President in 2005, and for two years his twin brother served as Prime Minister.

Law and Justice is known as a rather far right wing party with close ties to the Catholic Church. Their approval ratings have been down in the last year or two, and he was not expected to be re-elected in the next Presidential election. These days his main political rival is the current Prime Minister- Donald Tusk (also from Gdansk). Tusk is part of the center-right party, Civic Party. They currently control much of parliament.

Ironically, Kaczynsk and his delegation were on their way to the Katyn Forest on the Russian border. It is the 70th anniversary of one (of many) of Poland’s tragedies.

Most people know that the Nazi’s invaded Poland from the west in 1939. However, Stalin took advantage of the weakened Army and invaded Poland from the east a few weeks later. In April of 1940, the Russian army had gathered 22,000 Poles from the army and political prisoners- marched them into the Katyn forest and executed them by shooting them in the head. Hundreds per day for several weeks. They were all buried in mass graves in the Katyn forest.

Poland has multiple memorials with the simple word “Katyn” inscribed on it. Double ironically, it was the Nazi’s who found the mass graves on their march to Moscow in 1943. At the time, they tried to paint the Russians and Stalin as mass murderers in the press and expressed their disgust. Russia did not even fully claim responsibility for Katyn until the 1990s, and it is still a sore subject between the two countries.

I bring up this history as it is playing a major part in the discussion (and already conspiracies) of the death of President Kaczynski. As both the leaders of Poland and Russia were to be at the Katyn ceremony- it was to represent a softening of relationships between the countries.

To add more controversy- as this occurred on Russian soil- Russia has named Vladamir Putin as chief investigator (he is not all that popular in Poland either). I found these interesting comments by Polish citizens on the internet- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8612920.stm

Per the Polish Constitution, the leader of the lower House is now President- and he is required to call a new election to be held within 60 days.

It will be interesting to see the activities that occur over the next week. As far as I know, this is the first modern leader to die/be killed in Poland.