One year on, Smolensk still divides the Poles

“Mourning and contempt,” headlines Gazeta Wyborcza the day after the first anniversary of the Smolensk air crash that on April 10 2010 killed 96 persons including Polish president Lech Kaczyński. Jarosław, the late president’s twin and the leader of the main opposition party Law and Justice (PiS), snubbed official ceremonies attended by the current president Bronisław Komorowski and PM Donald Tusk and gathered along with thousands of PiS supporters in front of the presidential palace. While Komorowski spoke about a need for national reconciliation, Jarosław Kaczyński insisted that those currently ruling the country “have no right to speak in the name of Poland”.

For GW it is “the beginning of the PiS election campaign” ahead of parliamentary elections this autumn. The daily, which accused Kaczyński of being ready to “trade any sanctity to return to power,” also lambasted his speech as “the most contemptuous for Poles in many years”. However, the conservative daily Rzeczpospolita insists that “community can’t be build on amnesia imposed from above” and should be based on actions aimed at “bringing us closer to the truth about Smoleńsk”. According to sociologist Grzegorz Makowski quoted by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, deep divisions triggered by the Smolensk air crash are not likely to disappear any time soon. “It is a conflict of different mindsets and ideologies - a kind of internal national crusade…which may last a decade or two.”