Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of the late president Lech Kaczynski who died in the Smolensk air disaster, said PM Tusk should tell his senior party colleagues, who continue to throw insults at the memory of his dead brother, “to shut up”.

Three prominent critics of the Kaczynski brothers, MP Janusz Palikot, Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski “and an elderly man whose name I shall not mention” [Władysław Bartoszewski] should be told “briefly and concisely to shut up”, Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Polish Radio this morning on the eve of the anniversary of the Smolensk disaster on 10 April.

On the political divisions that have dogged Poland’s political life since the disaster, Kaczynski said it was up to the ruling Civic Platform to cool down its rhetoric.

“One side of this dispute has very rich resources, while the other side has very poor resources. If the former stopped being so extremely aggressive and offensive in reference to the other, it would help to heal the divide…but I don’t to see any signs of this,” Kaczynski said.

The conflict has mainly revolved around who should take responsibility for the crash that killed many of the leading politicians in and around Kaczynski’s opposition Law and Justice party and many others from the military and NGOs.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski has claimed that Russia should at least admit negligence on its part in allowing the TU-154 to attempt to land at the airport near Smolensk on the foggy morning of 10 April.

Kaczynski also said yesterday, however, that he is still not discounting the possibility that the Smolensk 96 were “assassinated” and would not do so until Russia released all relevant details of the investigation carried out by the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK).

PM Tusk’s government, too, says Kaczynski, should also take ‘political responsibility” for not guaranteeing the safety of President Kaczynski and the others on board, as they travelled to a 1940 Katyn memorial ceremony in western Russia.

Law and Justice have claimed that Prime Minister Tusk has been over eager not to criticise the Russian Smolensk investigation, which has pointed to pilot error as being the main cause of the crash.

Electioneering?

Kaczynski said that PM Tusk’s interview with the BBC this week, when he said the “Russians are trying to cover up [some aspects of the catastrophe] not because of some dark secrets, but [because] as a rule they do not like to admit their own faults and weaknesses,” was merely a partial change of attitude for political purposes in the run up to an autumn general election in Poland.

A majority of Poles have told pollsters that they unconvinced that the whole truth has yet been told about the disaster.

The Law and Justice leader rejected an idea muted by both President Bronislaw Komorowski - who beat Kaczynski in presidential elections last July - and PM Tusk that parts of the wreck of the TU-154 should be included in a permanent monument to the Smolensk victims.

Kaczynski wants “two monuments” to be built, one of which should stand outside the Presidential Palace in Warsaw in memory to his dead brother.

“He was a good president,” Jaroslaw said of his twin brother Lech.

He said he would continue the work first started by his brother, which will involve a "strong, courageous, policy defending Polish interests and security, as well as defending Polish subjectivity as a European state." (pg)

Thenews.pl will be giving full coverage of the Smolensk disaster anniversary ceremonies and commemorations on Sunday, 10 April, beginning at 08.41 CET, the precise time the plane crashed in western Russia one year ago.