The Ministry of Defence was meant to have opened a tender for the purchase of new government aircraft two years ago, yet the plans were never put into action.

If the tender were to have taken place, the Polish government would have taken delivery of the new aircraft in March, a month before the Smolensk catastrophe on April 10, when President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other high-ranking officials died.

Former Defence Minster in the Law and Justice government, Aleksander Szczyglo annulled a previous tender, drafted by his predecessor Radoslaw Sikorski, due to missing protocols from the purchasing committee’s sittings, with some documents furthermore not properly signed and sealed for the tender to go ahead.

The complete set of documents was handed over to the new Minister of Defence, Bogdan Klich in March 2008, five months after he had taken up the position after general elections the previous year.

According to the purchasing timetable for new government aircraft, Minister Klich was to have signed a deal for new planes at the end of October 2009, yet again the tender was annulled in July 2009 due to “budget restrictions” as stated by Janusz Sejmej, spokesman for the Defence Ministry.

The history of purchasing new government planes reaches back to the Democratic Left Alliance government in 1994, which decided to buy 8 new aircraft to replace the aging Yak-40 fleet.

Almost every government since that time has drafted a tender or an agreement on the purchasing of new aircraft, yet none came to be realised. However, political scientists comment that governments avoided buying the new aircraft out of care for its public image and fear of being criticised for overspending. (jb)

Source: Rzeczpospolita

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