Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Below right; Kaczynski outside Presidential Palace, Friday night. photo: PAP
Though Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s aggressive style of leadership has come under attack of late from many in his own party, the Law and Justice chairman laid into the government, accusing them of being partly responsible for the death of his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski in the plane crash near Smolensk military airport.
On the five month anniversary of the Smolensk air crash, Kaczynski angrily attacked the government and listed factors which he believes led to the death 96 passengers on the TU-154, in a speech to an audience in Warsaw which included victim’s relatives.
Kaczynski claimed that a lack of respect for his brother, and the relentless attacks on him by PM Donald Tusk and the Civic Platform party, led to a lack of care among the government for his security.
“These two things are linked. If you decrease the respect [for the head of state] it increases the likelihood of attack and a reduced vigilance among security staff guarding the president,” Kaczynski said.
Security neglect
Jaroslaw Kaczynski also accused of the government of neglecting the repair of the presidential aircraft. Of the TU-154 which crashed in western Russia Kaczynski said: “The state of aviation servicing the president was tragic. The government knew about this, knew something could be done to change it, with the support of media and opposition parties. But nothing was done.”
The leader of the Law and Justice party also criticised the two separate visits, at different Katyn anniversary ceremonies, which led to Lech Kaczynski attending a different event days after the official commemoration involving PM Tusk and Vladimir Putin.
“If it were not for these actions [by the government] there would not have been a disaster,” Kaczynski said.
He also said that the lack of will on the Polish side to press Russia to produce more evidence of the causes of the disaster, as well as the conflict over the commemoration cross outside the President Palace, proves that the “war on the president has not stoped yet. Even when he is not alive”.
Before his speech yesterday, the Law and Justice party distributed a document laying out the case against the government. The document says that PM Tusk “together with Russian agents” used the Katyn anniversary - when Stalin’s NKVD murdered over 20,000 Polish POWs in 1940 - against the head of sate of their won country.
The list of Civic Platform politicians who hold a “moral and political responsibility for the disaster” include Donald Tusk , President Bronislaw Komorowski Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and Defence Minister Bogdan Klich, claims the Law and Justice document.
Later Kaczynski spoke a few words to a crowd of around 500 who had gathered opposite the Smolensk cross outside the Presidential Palace, where he demanded Komorowski solve the dispute over the cross. (pg)
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