Poland sets date for early presidential election

Poland sets date for early presidential election
By Jan Cienski in Warsaw
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: April 21 2010 10:39 | Last updated: April 21 2010 10:39
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f0c309f2-4d21-11df-baf3-00144feab49a.html


Poland will hold early presidential elections on June 20 to find a successor to Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in an air crash 12 days ago, Bronislaw Komorowski, the acting president, has announced.

Following Wednesday’s announcement, candidates have until May 6 to declare themselves and gather 100,000 signatures to be included on the ballot, a tight deadline set out by the Polish constitution.

The crash of the Russian-built Tu-154 airliner killed two presidential candidates: Mr Kaczynski, who was the standard bearer for the rightwing Law and Justice party he helped found; and Jerzy Szmajdzinski of the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance.

With Poland's official period of mourning over, both parties are scrambling to decide on a nominee.

The likeliest Law and Justice candidate is Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the dead president's twin brother and a former prime minister, although no decision has been made. Mr Kaczynski broke his long public silence on Tuesday, speaking at the funeral of Krzysztof Putra, the deputy speaker of parliament also killed in the crash.

Looking haggard, Mr Kaczynski describe Mr Putra as a “martyr” who wanted “a Poland that is strong and worthy, which matters in Europe and the world, and does not have to forget about its heroes”.

Law and Justice supporters have been keen to link the April 10 accident with the 1940 murder of 22,000 Polish officers by the Soviets. The Polish delegation headed by the president was on its way to a commemoration ceremony at the Katyn forest, site of thousands of executions.

The Democratic Left Alliance has not made a choice either, although a possible candidate is Ryszard Kalisz, a respected MP. However, the party has only about 10 per cent backing in opinion polls, so its candidate has little chance of winning.

Mr Komorowski, nominee of the ruling Civic Platform party, is the leading candidate. An enormous outpouring of national grief after the crash and a wave of sympathy for Mr Kaczynski personally have not translated into much of an increase in support for his party.

In a poll conducted for the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, Mr Komorowski wins handily against all potential candidates from Law and Justice, while candidates from other parties do not break into double digits.

Mr Komorowski has had to undertake a delicate balancing act in being both an acting president and a presidential candidate. A dignified, if uncharismatic man, he seems to have carried it off.

Although the mourning period is over, the crash and its after-effects still dominate Poland. There were several funerals on Tuesday, including Szmajdzinski’s, and 21 bodies have still not been returned from Moscow, where they were taken pending identification.

The cause of the crash has not yet been ascertained.

“Explaining the causes of the catastrophe of the government aircraft will take a lot of hard work and will not happen in the near future,” Andrzej Seremet, Poland’s chief prosecutor, told a news conference on Tuesday.

Polish investigators have asked their Russian counterparts for materials from the investigation, including transcripts from conversations recorded by the black boxes. The investigation is being led by the Russians because the accident took place on their territory.