THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The death in a plane crash Saturday of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, together with the cream of the nation's conservative opposition and the entire command of the armed forces, will have a dramatic impact on the nation's politics, politicians and analysts said.
Mr. Kaczynski, together with his twin brother Jaroslaw, was a divisive character within Poland and in Europe. The twins pushed unashamedly for conservative values and a righting of historical wrongs with 20th-century foes Russia and Germany in ways that ruffled feathers and often seemed out of step with the times.
Yet with Mr. Kaczynski's passing, even visceral political foes recognized that the country's political scene has suffered a loss that won't be easily rectified, although one that could simplify life for the current government and for Poland's interlocutors.
"This is a tragedy that's second after Katyn," said former President Lech Walesa in remarks on television, referring to the 1940 slaughter of more than 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviet NKVD, precursor of the KGB, which Mr. Kaczynski had been on his way to commemorate. "Over there, they tried to cut off our head. The elite of our country has been killed again. It will take a while to fill this gap. This is a great loss."
Mr. Walesa had long since fallen out with Mr. Kaczynski, but Saturday's plane crash struck Poland as a national tragedy. The irony that Polish leaders were wiped out as they traveled to attend the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre was deeply felt by Poles.
The crash is likely to have a lopsided effect on Polish domestic politics, however, leaving the conservative Law and Justice Party with no obvious candidate for presidential elections. These were to be held in September or October, but will now need to be moved up to June at the latest. The candidate for the left-of-center Democratic Left Alliance, deputy speaker of parliament, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, also was on the plane when it crashed. There were no survivors reported. >>> Marc Champion and Marcin Sobczyk | Saturday, April 10, 2010
