Seventy percent of respondents told pollsters that President Bronislaw Komorowski should decide the fate of the controversial Smolensk cross currently outside his residence.
The poll by GfK Polonia found two out of three Poles believe the local government at Warsaw city hall should resolve the conflict over the cross and decide whether the cross stays outside the Presidential Palace or if it is moved to a nearby church.
The survey comes after incumbent president of Warsaw Hanna Gronkiewicz -Waltz promised, Thursday, that if she is re-elected in the local elections in the autumn then she would hold a referendum on the issue.
President Gronkiewicz-Waltz told a session of the City Council that the cross must not be an instrument in a political struggle. She stressed that the City of Warsaw is not a side in the current conflict, recalling that an agreement on moving the cross from its present location in front of the presidential palace to the nearby church was concluded between the Presidential Chancellery, the Church and the scouts who had placed the cross in the first place.
The opinion poll found that 55 percent believe the families should have the final say where the cross should be situated while 53 percent think the Church to have the say.
Sixty three percent of respondents think the families of the victims of the April 10 air disaster should have the final say on how a permanent monument to the dead should look and where it should be. Thirty eight percent believe the monument should be in a cemetery and 34 per debt think it should be in the vicinity of the Presidential Palace.
The poll was taken from a sample of 500 on August 26 and was commissioned by the Rzeczpospolita daily.
Meanwhile, when addressing the faithful at the Black Madonna shrine of Częstochowa, the Archbishop of Gdansk Slawoj Leszek Głódz said that in resolving the cross dispute, it is necessary to listen to the voice of the nation’s heart and conscience.
He stressed that there has not been a word of apology so far addressed to the late president Lech Kaczyński, who was the object of mockery and humiliation. “Why was that so?” the archbishops asked rhetorically, “Was it because he loved Poland and wanted it to remain faithful to its Christian identity?”.
(pg/mk)
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