From SwissInfo

Plane crash kills Polish president, dozens more

swissinfo.ch and agencies
Apr 10, 2010 - 17:38


Polish President Lech Kaczynski is dead after a plane he and other senior officials were travelling in crashed on approach to a Russian airport.

Kaczynski's wife Maria was among 97 people on the plane, which came down in foggy weather while on approach to Smolensk airport in western Russia on Saturday. There were no survivors.

On board were the army chief of staff, national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the national security office, deputy parliament speaker, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

President Doris Leuthard and Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, who met Kaczynski in 2007 while she held the rotating presidency, both offered their condolences.

The Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-154 Kaczynski was in had been travelling from Warsaw, went down at around 11:00am local time (9:00am Swiss time, 3:00am ET). The flight normally takes around 90 minutes.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart," Sergei Anufriev, governor of the Smolensk region, said on state news channel Rossiya-24. "Nobody has survived the disaster."

Television pictures showed the burning fuselage and fragments of the plane scattered in a forest. with pieces of the plane scattered widely amid leafless trees and small fires burning in woods.

A tail fin with the Polish red and white colors stuck up from the debris. The crash occurred about two kilometres from Smolensk airport.

"We still cannot fully understand the scope of this tragedy and what it means for us in the future. Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland," said Polish foreign ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski.


Succession

In the case of a president's death, the speaker of the lower chamber of parliament. Officials have said there will be an election to choose a new president.

In Warsaw, Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an extraordinary meeting of his cabinet and the national flag was lowered to half-staff at the presidential palace, where people gathered to lay flowers and light candles. Black ribbons appeared in some windows in the Polish capital.

Kaczynski had been flying to Katyn, near Smolensk, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

Thousands of Polish prisoners of war and intellectuals were murdered at Katyn by Soviet forces in spring 1940 in an enduring symbol for Poles of their suffering under Soviet rule.

Families of those killed at Katyn were also on board the plane, the Polish government official at the airport said.

The plane’s pilot reportedly ignored instructions to land elsewhere. "The pilot was advised to fly to Moscow or Minsk because of heavy fog, but he still decided to land. No one should have been landing in that fog," a Russian air traffic control official said on condition his name was not published.

The presidential Tu-154 was 21 years old. Polish officials have long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country's leaders but said they lacked the funds.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service.


Powerful twins

Kaczynski, age 60, became a power broker with his identical twin brother Jaroslaw in Poland’s fragmented political scene following the fall of communism.

He had been interned under martial law from December 1981 to October 1982 for his involvement in the Solidarity movement.

In the country’s first free presidential elections in 1990 the twins were the driving force behind hero Lech Walesa's victory. Kaczynski became the head of the national security office under Walesa. The two fell out after Kaczynski resisted plans for "shock therapy" economic reforms.

Kaczynski’s 2005 presidential win followed a general election victory by the Law and Justice party led by Jaroslaw, and made the Kaczynski duo the undisputed first family in the new European Union member state.

Poland's president is commander-in-chief of its armed forces but the position's domestic duties are chiefly symbolic.

In office, the twins campaigned to expose those who had collaborated with the communists and promised a "moral revolution" against corruption.

Kaczynski was a critic of the economically liberal government and often vetoed its bills, including 2008 plans to encourage hospitals to operate on a commercial basis – a plan the president said amounted to privatisation. He vetoed a 2009 bill that aimed to shake up public media.

Kaczynski's appeal was based on his image as an incorruptible politician who, unlike some post-communist leaders, never personally benefited from politics.

Poland, a nation of 38 million people, is by far the largest of the ten formerly communist countries that have joined the European Union in recent years.

Will the next Polish President be called Kaczynski?

Hopefully not.

get out your tin foil hats, did the russians shoot it down.

Originally Posted by Zan de Man

Hopefully not.

I would consider it rather likely.

For those, who haven't followed Polish politics: Lech Kaczyński has a twin brother, Jarosław Kaczyński, who is also politician. From 2006-2007, Lech was President, whereas Jarosław served as Prime Minister.

Jarosław lost the election in 2007, probably because the Poles considered that there was too much power concentrated in the two twins, but this situation has changed now with the death of Lech.

I would consider it rather likely that the Poles will now elect Jarosław as President, if for no other reason than to honor the memory of Lech. Lech has been highly popular with a large segment of the Polish population.

From the Guardian

Poland in shock as plane crash kills President Lech Kaczynski

Smolensk disaster claims life of head of state, wife and top officials as they travel to memorial for Katyn massacre

Luke Harding and Kate Connolly, Warsaw
guardian.co.uk
Saturday 10 April 2010 22.46 BST


Poland was confronting the worst political disaster in its postwar history after President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and dozens of top officials were killed when their plane crashed in thick fog on Saturday in western Russia.

At least 96 people died, including eight crew members, when the president's Tupolev plane clipped a copse of trees on its approach to Smolensk airport. It then broke up. There were no survivors. Russian TV showed pictures of the upended wing and smouldering fuselage. Small fires burned in woods shrouded in fog.

The crash wiped out almost half of Poland's leadership. Those killed included Kaczynski, his wife, Maria, the army chief of staff, the head of the national bank, Poland's deputy foreign minister, 12 members of parliament, and at least two presidential aides, the Polish foreign ministry said. Rescuers found several unidentified bodies and the plane's black box.

Across Poland bells were rung at a slow and mournful pace. People sought solace in churches and drifted through city squares, apparently in a daze, and laid candles at national monuments and government buildings. Mourners queued in their hundreds to sign books of condolences, young people in leather jackets and torn jeans, and elderly women in headscarves and clutching pictures of the Black Virgin of Czestochowa.

"I can't fathom this, it reminds me of when the pope died – five years ago this month," said Zofia, recalling the death of Pope John Paul II on 5 April 2005. Kaczynski had been flying to Smolensk to attend the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when Soviet secret police executed 15,000 Polish officers in one of the most notorious incidents of the second world war. In a tragic twist, family members of the Katyn victims were on board the president's plane. Others were waiting at the airport.

Although there was no suspicion of foul play, the extraordinary timing and location of the disaster, together with Kaczynski's known antipathy towards the Kremlin, are likely to fuel conspiracy theories on both sides. Newspapers bearing headlines such as "Katyn – a double tragedy" lay next to portraits of some of the crash victims.

"We still cannot fully understand the scope of this tragedy and what it means for us in the future. Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland," a foreign ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski said. "We can assume with great certainty that all persons on board have been killed."

Russian officials said that the airport, 430km (270 miles) west of Moscow, had been closed because of thick fog. They advised the pilot to land instead in Moscow or Minsk. But he continued with the original flight plan – making three abortive attempts to land at Smolensk's Severny military airport. On the fourth attempt, the Russian-built airliner crashed. According to witnesses, Kaczynski's plane was between 500 and 700 metres from the runway, and about 20 metres off the ground when it ploughed into the trees.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart," Smolensk's governor, Sergei Anufriev, said.

In Warsaw, Poland's prime minister, Donald Tusk, held an extraordinary meeting of his cabinet, as disbelieving Poles struggled to comprehend the news that the country's 60-year-old president – and numerous civilian and military leaders – had perished. Looking shattered, Tusk emerged to declare a day of national mourning. He said a two-minute silence for victims of the tragedy would be held at midday today. "The contemporary world has not seen such a tragedy," he said.

World leaders yesterday paid tribute to Kaczynski, who was elected in 2005 after defeating Tusk in a presidential vote. He and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, a former prime minister now in opposition, emerged from Poland's anti-communist Solidarity movement. They have dominated Polish politics for the past decade, espousing a national conservative – and often anti-Russian – ideology. Kaczynski leaves a daughter, Marta, and two granddaughters.

Gordon Brown said: "The whole world will be saddened and in sorrow as a result of this tragic death in a plane crash of President Kaczynski and his wife Maria and the party that were with him. I think we know the difficulties that Poland has gone through and the sacrifices that he himself made as part of the Solidarity movement, and we know the contribution he made to the independence and the freedom of Poland."

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said she was "deeply dismayed by the plane crash and the death of the Polish president", while France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, hailed him as a "tireless defender" of liberty and "the fight against totalitarianism". Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, also sent his condolences.

The subject of Katyn has for decades been a source of unresolved friction between Moscow and Warsaw – with successive Soviet governments falsely blaming the Nazis for the massacre. Recently, however, tensions had been easing, with Tusk and Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, attending a joint ceremony at Katyn last Wednesday. Putin and Tusk were due to travel to Smolensk to inspect the crash site.

Kaczynski had said he would seek a second term in presidential elections this autumn. He was expected to face an uphill struggle against the speaker, Bronislaw Komorowski, the candidate of Tusk's governing Civic Platform party. Komorowski yesterday took over Kaczynski's job as head of state, a largely symbolic role. The election will be brought forward, with Poles set to go to the polls to choose a new president by the end of June.

Polish officials have long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country's leaders but said they lacked the funds. The presidential Tu-154 that crashed was 26 years old. It was overhauled in December in Russia, with Russian experts yesterday insisting that it was airworthy and blaming pilot error and bad weather.

Among the victims was Anna Walentynowicz, whose dismissal in August 1980 from the Lenin shipyards in the Polish port of Gdansk ignited the strike that led to the creation of the Solidarity movement and, ultimately, the collapse of communist rule. She became a prominent Solidarity member.

Quote:

Poland was confronting the worst political disaster in its postwar history

I don't want to harp on the past or anything, but I think that the Soviet occupation was maybe a tad worse.

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From the Independent

Poland calls for solidarity

By Tony Paterson in Warsaw
Tuesday, 13 April 2010


The ill-fated journey that wiped out Poland's governing elite on Saturday was prompted by an angry feud between President Lech Kaczynski and his Prime Minister over the country's tense relationship with Russia, it emerged yesterday.

As the body of the 60-year-old President, who died along with 95 senior religious, political and military figures, lay in state and Poland struggled to come to terms with its worst national tragedy since the Second World War, details of the political acrimony that preceded the disaster surfaced in Warsaw.

A constantly changing crowd now gathers in front of the city's white stucco presidential palace where the pavements have disappeared under an ocean of flowers, flickering candles in glass holders and photographs of the deceased President and his wife, Maria.

Many queued for hours to sign a book of condolences. Jana Sokolowska, a 45-year-old office worker with three children, said she had taken the day off work to join the long line snaking into the palace building. "I felt I had to do something," she said. "This is one of the saddest times for Poland and I wanted to show my solidarity and sympathy with all the relatives of those killed in the crash," she added.

A joint funeral will be held on Saturday at the earliest. "It is clear that the main commemoration of the victims should take place in a single event. All flew out together, so it is right that they should all be remembered together," said Jacek Sasin, a close aide of the late President.

Details emerged in Warsaw of the background to the President's fatal flight to attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers by Soviet forces.

Sources said Mr Kaczynski and many in his entourage on board the doomed Tupolev were dissatisfied with attempts to effect a reconciliation over the 1940 massacre at a special ceremony in Katyn on Wednesday called by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin, a former KGB agent, had invited his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, to attend a special ceremony of remembrance.

But the soft-glove handling of that event by Mr Tusk tried the patience of the Polish President, who had not been invited. He resolved to fly to Katyn himself three days later in the company of his political allies in defiance of Mr Putin. "They wanted to hold their own ceremony in Katyn to give the anniversary the importance they thought it deserved but felt had been denied by Russia," a source close to the President's office said yesterday.

President Kaczynski and members of his right-wing Law and Justice party felt they had been snubbed by Russia. They were also irritated that Mr Tusk, leader of the liberal Civic Platform party, had been allowed to take credit for Wednesday's ceremony. But even more galling was the fact that Mr Putin had failed specifically to apologise or address the massacre of Polish officers at Katyn and had simply referred to "victims of Stalinist terror" during the ceremony and that Mr Tusk had apparently failed to take his Russian counterpart to task over it.

"Moscow is sabotaging attempts to give a proper historical account," said Andrejz Przewoznik, the general secretary of Poland's State Council for National Memorials. "There was no breakthrough on Katyn," remarked Aleksandr Szczyglo, president of the Polish National Security Council. Both men were on the plane and were killed in the crash.

Mr Kaczynski had a long history of rivalry with Mr Tusk. The two even argued about who was entitled to use Poland's official Tupolev 154 plane, which crashed on Saturday. With a presidential election looming, Mr Kaczynski clearly felt that he could improve on Mr Tusk's efforts at remembering in Katyn.

There was also speculation in Poland yesterday that President Kaczynski was so determined never to set foot in Moscow before extracting an apology from Mr Putin that he may have personally intervened and ordered the 36-year-old pilot of the Tupolev not to divert to the Russian capital but to land in Smolensk despite repeated warnings by air traffic controllers at the tiny airport that the fog made conditions too dangerous to attempt a touch down.

Polish media reports recalled that in 2008 following Russia's invasion of Georgia, Mr Kaczynski had attempted to fly to Tibilisi to show his support for a country under siege. During the flight he took the unprecedented step of entering the cockpit and ordering the pilot to land despite adverse conditions. On that occasion the pilot refused, the aircraft diverted to another airport and Mr Kaczynski entered Georgia by car.

On Saturday, because the President's entourage was so big, the Polish media flew separately, landing an hour earlier before the fog set in. As news of the crash came in, the camera crews were left to film the shocked faces of those already at the ceremony who had been waiting for the President.

From SwissInfo

Late Polish president's twin brother to seek top job

By Gareth Jones and Gabriela Baczynska
Apr 26, 2010 - 17:56


WARSAW (Reuters) - Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of Poland's late president, declared his candidacy on Monday for a presidential election but political analysts said the combative nationalist was unlikely to win.

Poles are due to elect a new president on June 20 following the death of Lech Kaczynski, along with 95 other people, mostly senior Polish officials, in a plane crash in Russia on April 10.

Despite an increase of sympathy for the Kaczynski family, opinion polls show Acting President Bronislaw Komorowski of the centrist Civic Platform as the most likely election winner.

A snap opinion poll conducted by the Homo Homini agency after Kaczysnki's announcement on Monday showed him winning 32 percent against 46 percent for Komorowski. Such an outcome would force a second, decisive round of the election on July 4.

Lech Kaczynski, elected president in 2005, had been expected to lose the election to Komorowski.

"In reality, it won't be him (Jaroslaw Kaczynski) running, it will be his brother. His campaign team will play on sympathy for his brother," said Krzysztof Bobinski, head of the Unia & Polska Foundation, a Warsaw think-tank.

"Kaczynski would have a chance to win only if other candidates make mistakes. This is a difficult situation for everybody. This is not a normal election campaign but I think political attitudes generally have not changed among voters."

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a former prime minister who also heads Poland's main opposition party, the right-wing, eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS), said he wanted to continue his brother's conservative mission.

"Poland is our great shared obligation. We are required to overcome our personal pain and to take on this mission despite the personal tragedy. That's why I have taken the decision to run for the presidency of Poland," he said in a statement.

Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, were buried in a state funeral in Krakow on April 18. Komorowski took over as acting president in his capacity as speaker of parliament, the second highest ranking position in Poland's state hierarchy.


SYMPATHY VOTE

The decision to run will have been difficult for Kaczynski both personally and politically. Many Poles regard him as a divisive figure whose spell as premier in 2006-7 put a strain on Poland's relations with Germany, Russia and the EU.

Polish media also say he has yet to tell his ailing 83-year-old mother of Lech's death.

The election outcome matters for Poland, the European Union's largest ex-communist member. Although Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his government hold most power, the president can veto laws and also has a say in foreign and security policy.

Lech Kaczynski had irked the Tusk government by blocking health, pension and media reforms. He and Jaroslaw had also resisted government efforts to push for the swift introduction of the euro in Poland.

The Kaczynski twins were senior members of the pro-democracy Solidarity trade union that toppled communism in 1989. The union no longer has significant political clout but on Monday its leader, Janusz Sniadek, publicly backed Jaroslaw Kaczynski's presidential bid.

Other candidates for the presidential race include Waldemar Pawlak, whose Peasants' Party is the junior partner in Tusk's coalition, and Grzegorz Napieralski, leader of the leftist SLD opposition party. Neither is seen winning many votes.

"After the recent events, Polish politics is a lot less predictable," said Rafal Chwedoruk of Warsaw University's Institute of Political Science.

Well of course. It's been two whole weeks; leave it much longer and the seat'll be cold...

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