Poland’s president and prime minister
will for the first time take part in commemorations of the Smolensk plane crash
after rejecting years of investigations into the tragedy that devastated a
swath of the country’s ruling elite.
The ruling Law & Justice party led
by Jaroslaw Kaczynski is planning a new investigation into the 2010 crash in
the Russian city, which killed 96 people including then-President Lech
Kaczynski, his twin, as well as the head of the central bank and top military
officials. The reopening of Poland’s most painful event since World War II
accompanies a government push for policies that have drawn criticism for
undermining democracy.
“The main difference is that the Polish
president and premier are taking part, unlike during the past
anniversaries,” Beata Mazurek, spokeswoman of the Law & Justice
parliamentary caucus, said by phone Friday. “Poland’s most important leaders
died in Smolensk and to date the authorities have been acting as if they didn’t
notice.”
Kaczynski and President Andrzej Duda
will give speeches on Sunday to a gathering that organizers expect to swell to
as large as 100,000 people, according to Warsaw city hall. The march, also seen
as a show of support for Law & Justice, which is pursuing family-oriented,
euro-skeptic policies, may dwarf this year’s protests by Polish opposition
groups. They oppose sweeping changes to courts and other top institutions that
fellow European Union members and U.S. officials have criticized as endangering
democracy.
Investigations
Rejected
Law and Justice has rejected the
conclusions of two separate investigations by Poland and Russia that blamed the
crash on pilot error by the Polish crew as they tried to land in heavy fog in
Smolensk.
Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said
last month that a bomb on board may have been the cause. Foreign Minister
Witold Waszczykowski told the Polish wSieci magazine in January that Russia had
“something to hide” because it denied Poland access to evidence and didn’t
return the wreckage.
“In essence we have to start from
scratch,” Kaczynski told Gazeta Polska newspaper Thursday. “The past six years
have seen the rule of people who didn’t want to find the truth, no matter what
the truth is.”
Politicians of the opposition Civic
Platform, which ruled from 2007 to 2015, have repeatedly said that claims that
the crash wasn’t an accident are groundless. The government plane was carrying
officials to Russia for a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet
Union’s World War II massacre of thousands of Polish officers at nearby Katyn
in 1940.
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