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Polish Plane-Crash Plaque Riles Defenders of Impromptu Cross Near Palace
Poland’s presidential administration installed a plaque on the wall of the official residence as it seeks to end a conflict over how to honor the late President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others killed in an April 10 plane crash.
The memorial, unveiled today on the palace wall facing the main street in Warsaw’s old town, is designed to replace a wooden cross erected in the days after the crash that has become the site of a continuing Catholic prayer vigil and protests against President Bronislaw Komorowski, elected last month, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government.
Hundreds of protesters clashed with police in front of the palace Aug. 3, preventing the cross from being moved to nearby St. Anne’s church, seen by the president and the Catholic Church as a more appropriate site for the memorial. Those defending the cross identify with the Law & Justice party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the late president’s twin.
“It is about politics and not about the cross,” Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz said today at a news conference in the capital, appealing to “the cross defenders, their opponents and politicians to stop using the cross as a political instrument.”
The defenders today refused to remove the cross before a permanent memorial is built, repeating their statement of “non possumus,” a Biblical term meaning “we will not give up.” Poland is about 90 percent Roman Catholic, according to 2002 statistics cited in the CIA World Factbook.
“The plaque isn’t adequate to the size of the tragedy,” one of the defenders said at a televised press conference, without giving his name.
The conflict has escalated since Jaroslaw Kaczynski lost the July 4 presidential election. Law & Justice has blamed the government for contributing to the crash by failing to buy new aircraft and said Komorowski’s victory was a mistake because Poles weren’t aware of his hostility to the late president.
Tusk’s Civic Platform and Law & Justice, both of which have their roots in the Solidarity movement that overturned communism in 1989, have been tussling for power since 2005, when they failed to form a coalition.
To contact the reporter on this story: Dorota Bartyzel in Warsaw at dbartyzel@bloomberg.net
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