Head of the major conservative opposition Law and Justice Jarosław Kaczyński told supporters on Friday that the Polish state “had failed the test” with regards to the Smolensk plane crash investigations.
Speaking on the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, which killed his twin brother, President Lech Kaczyński, and 95 others on 10 April 2010, Jarosław Kaczyński maintained that in reality, the investigation “was handed over to the Russians”.
At a rally held outside the Presidential Palace by PiS supporters and other right-wing sympathisers, Kaczyński lampooned the words of Bronisław Komorowski, who said – while Parliamentary Speaker and Acting President following the crash – that “Poland passed the test”.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Kaczyński enthused, adding that Poland “failed the test, and at a very basic level”.
According to Kaczyński “the Polish state attacked Polish society, a community which had integrated around the tragedy”.
Jarosław Kaczyński went on to mention the investigation efforts into the crash, accusing the Polish state of in part “accepting the absurd and disparaging reports […] from the [head of Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee, Tatiana] Anodina commission”.
“Poles have been continuously lied to,” Kaczyński said, with his supporters fervently chanting “shame, shame”.
Later in the evening, Kaczyński thanked his supporters, including Catholic-nationalist media mogul Redemptorist Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, as well as the right-wing press.
“Without the truth about [what happened in] Smolensk, there will never be a free, independent, strong and secure as well as just Poland; the Poland which we care about, the Poland we dream of,” Kaczyński underlined. (jb)
Dariusz Cisowski
