Smolensk memorial cross. Photo: east news

At a press conference given on Friday, head of the opposition Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski said that the cross commemorating the Smolensk victims, currently placed outside the Presidential Palace, should only be removed once a memorial plaque is put in its place.

Anyone who thinks otherwise, Kaczynski said, is committing “a serious breach of morality.”

Jaroslaw Kaczynski firmly stated that if the President-Elect, Bronislaw Komorowski decides to move the cross it will be obvious that he will be “on the same side as [Grzegorz] Napieralski and [Jose Luis] Zapatero,” referring to the secular stance of the mentioned politicians.

“This cross is a symbol which refers to the late president and his wife, and also to all the victims of the catastrophe,” Kaczynski underlined.

Scouting organisations, which erected the cross shortly after the Smolensk crash on April 10, have appealed “not to entangle the issue of the cross in political arguments and go against the spirit of mutual respect.”

Personal tragedy

Jaroslaw Kaczynski stated that he has a personal duty to tend to the investigations surrounding the Smolensk tragedy, in which his twin brother, president Lech Kaczynski died along with 95 other high-ranking officials on April 10.

“Taking care of the investigation surrounding the Smolensk catastrophe is a moral duty towards the people who died [there],” Jaroslaw Kaczynski announced at a press conference, Friday, underlining that “this is not a new [political] strategy, it is a moral imperative.”

“I have a moral duty to deal with the matter,” Kaczynski said, “because it concerns my brother, my sister-in-law, my friends, and dozens of other people, whom I knew, whom I didn’t know, […] but they were all Polish citizens who died –  and it has to said this way – in a strange catastrophe.”

“No honest person in my position would leave this case unaccounted for,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski said.

White papers

At the press conference, Kaczynski announced future conferences and the drafting of “white papers on a European scale” pertaining to the Smolensk catastrophe.

The white paper reports are to document the alleged government negligence in the Smolensk enquiry.

The move comes after Kaczynski stated that the Polish government has been acting “very strangely” as to the Smolensk investigation. (jb)

Sources: IAR/PAP/TOK FM

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