The Polish Temptation. Katyn and Smolensk

This week I have been visiting Poland and having a close touch with the polish reality. And obviously with the reactions after the Smolensk accident.

I remeber the program in the first channel of the TVP called "Solidarni 2010" [Youtube], in which anonymous citizens paying homage to the victims in the center of the main polish cities, gave their impressions about the Smolensk accident, the President and Katyn.

The combination of the Katyn Massacre Anniversary with the Smolensk accident of the Tupolev 154M where the President and other polish authorities died is really a politically unpredictable event.

President Lech Kaczyński's popularity was on a minimum before his dead; a TNS OBOP enquire, made one month before the accident, concluded that only the 27% of the poles gave their approval to Kaczyński's presidency. After the accident, another enquire gave that one 52% of the population had a positive feeling about his figure. This predictable result can be compared with the efect caused by the attack suffered by Silvio Berlusconi.

The magazines and newspapers were full of photos of the life and miracles of Lech Kaczyński (with titles like "A life for Poland"), as well as photos of his daugher and grandaughter in the funeral, clearly inspired by JFK's funeral aesthetics.

But there are still important questions about the accident that haven't been answered, and, obviously, the more important is what was the cause. It seems that the poor weather conditions advised to cancel the landing at Smolensk. And the russian authorities claim that the control tower recommended the plane landing in Minsk or Moscow. Despite of this the plane attempted three times landing before the fourth try proved to be fatal. In the last attempt, he flew far too low and hit treetops, causing the plane to go out of control and crash into a forest.

There could have been too communication problems between the tower and the plane about the heights, but the main question remains: why did the captain insist in landing in Smolensk, against the advise of the tower and, even after three failed attempts?

Both the captain and co-pilot had plenty of flight experience. Arkadiusz Protasiuk († 36) had graduated officer school and had worked in the special service for transport flights since 1997. He had been crew leader since 2009 and had completed 1,939 flying hours. The second pilot, Robert Karol Grzywa († 36), had 3,521 flying hours. And there comes the most consistent hypothesis: direct orders from President Kaczyński, who was, as President, the head of the Polish Army. He had to attend an homage to the victims of Katyn at 10:00, so there was no possibility that he arrived on time if the plane landed in a different airport. And even more important, he had already ordered the landing of a plane against the Captain's opinion in 2008.

In August 12, 2008, Kaczyński was on a flight to Tblisi, Georgia, to give support to to this country in its conflict with Russia. At the arrival, the control tower advised to land in another airport. The Captain did so, against the direct order of Kaczyński to land anyway, and he was later dismissed by the President.

So it seems that there is a high probability that Kaczyński ordered the pilot to land no matter what. In this case he would be responsible not only for his own dead, but also for the dead of 94 other people.

Perhaps to fight this theory, other rumours have appeared about the russian implication in the accident. This rumours claim that Kaczyński could have been murdered.

But the big problem is that Kaczyński was nobody politically speaking. He may have been a problem for Russia in the past, but now, with his presidency facing the end and with a really low popularity he was nothing of interest for Russia. Even in Europe, Kaczyński didn't had any kind of influence. His supporters defend the idea that he was a near-to-the-people president, in contrast to, for instance, Lech Walesa. But the second may have been a disappoiting president for the poles, but, due to his biography, he was a relatively respected politician in Europe; Kaczyński was never an influential voice in the european panorama.

And also there is the other side of manipulation: the "katynification" of Kaczyński; the mixing between the figure of the dead President and the victims of Katyn. The purpose is obvious: to give the dead President the halo of one of those martyred poles killed by the soviets. In this sense is especially interesting to use the idea of the conspiracy in his dead.

And also it has been created the perception that it was Kaczyński who unveiled the massacre of Katyn, something ridiculous if we think that it was Boris Yeltsin who declassified the documents about the massacre [Wikipedia].

The greatest danger now is that his brother becomes the President of Poland, using the memory of his brother to convince the voters.