nasza_maggie
20.07.06, 12:20
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2277733,00.html
'Terrible twins' take power and declare war against EU liberals
By Roger Boyes
They oppose homosexuality, suspect foreigners, are almost telepathic and
promise to defend their culture. Poland's new leaders are setting off alarm
bells
THE Kaczynski twins, the most bizarre political partnership in Europe,
assumed power formally in Poland yesterday after parliament approved Jaroslaw
Kaczynski’s appointment as Prime Minister.
Mr Kaczynski, whose brother Lech is President, will accentuate the country’s
status as one of the most awkward members of the European Union. In an
inaugural speech yesterday he promised to make Poland a big country that
would count in Brussels while protecting its culture and morals against EU
liberalisation.
Marriage should remain a union between a man and a woman, he declared. “We
won’t let ourselves say that black is white,” he said. “We are going to
protect this foundation of social life.”
Homophobic, intolerant, ultranationalist and always eager for a scrap with
Poland’s neighbours, the twins are sending alarm bells ringing in and out of
the country.
“He will be a bad Prime Minister,” Donald Tusk, the leader of the opposition
Citizens’ Platform, said, “and he will have an unprecedented concentration of
power at his disposal.”
The former President and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, who was once advised
by the twins, described them as polarisers with a destructive energy. He
said: “I didn’t like their conspiracy theories. They were always suspecting
people, always involved in intrigue.”
To reduce confusion Lech Kaczynski did not appear yesterday in the
presidential chair to cheer on his brother. The prospect of television
cameras swivelling between the two men would have detracted from Jaroslaw
Kaczynski’s moment of glory. Jaroslaw Kaczynski has been sensitive about
world reaction to twins taking over the running of a country and since last
autumn has resisted offers to become Prime Minister. Look-alike rulers have
occurred only in fiction, such as Antony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda or in
Hollywood films.
On the face of it the blueprint for Poland that Jaroslaw Kaczynski presented
to parliament was a sensible centre-right programme. To reduce Polish
dependence on Russian oil and gas he favoured nuclear energy development and
was counting on the supply of Norwegian gas.
To retain a strong Polish currency he pledged to cap the budget deficit. He
also promised to reduce the housing shortage and combat unemployment rates of
22 per cent.
Yet the twins, 57, are famed for their fractiousness. Jaroslaw Kaczynski,
deploring the declining Polish population, made it clear yesterday that
Poland would remain hostile to abortion. And critics had no doubt that his
Government would seek to exclude homosexuals from the teaching profession.
Lech Kaczynski ordered the police to break up a demonstration by gays during
his tenure as Mayor of Warsaw, declaring: “I have nothing against them
protesting as citizens, only as homosexuals.”
That sentiment was shared by his brother. Indeed, the views of the new Prime
Minister and the President are so similiar that they often finish each
other’s sentences. The only way to distinguish them is by a small mole to the
left of Lech Kaczynski’s nose and the cat hairs on Jaroslaw’ Kaczynski’s
clothes.
Lech is married with a daughter, but his brother lives with their mother in a
house full of cats. Their mother, Jadwiga, a retired professor of literature,
shaped their politics.
She was a nurse in the Warsaw Uprising against the Germans in 1944 and
nurtured their antagonism to the Germans and the Russians, who failed to go
to the assistance of the Poles. When a Berlin newspaper recently mocked their
relationship to their mother, Lech Kaczynski demanded an apology from the
German Government, compared the article to the ravings of Der Stürmer, a Nazi-
era newspaper, and refused to attend a meeting with Angela Merkel, the German
Chancellor, and President Chirac of France.
Neither twin is keen on foreign countries. Lech Kaczynski proudly declared
that his experience of modern Germany was limited to the lavatories of
Frankfurt airport. The brothers are also convinced that Moscow is using its
energy supplies to pressurise Poland.
“I want us to be proud of being Poles,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski said yesterday.
Polish foreign policy, he said, would focus on strengthening democracy in
Ukraine, play a creative role in resolving the crisis in the EU and stand
firmly alongside the US.
“Poland is not a nation of deserters,” he said, referring to his commitment
to keeping troops in Iraq. That may yet be a divisive issue in the future.
One of his coalition partners, the volatile pig breeder Andrzej Lepper,
argues in favour of a withdrawal.
The key may lie in the 45 minutes that separated the births of the brothers.
Jaroslaw is the older, dominant twin — the strategist and plotter. Lech is
more gregarious but also more submissive. Sometimes he will pick up the phone
before it rings, knowing that his brother is calling.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
“In Poland there are many people who behave as if they are independent
academics or journalists but they are in fact on the German payroll”
“The opposition front has been put together by the German security services”
Jaroslaw Kaczynski
“I am for tolerance but against propagating homosexuality”
“We will see the full disintegration of the Russian Empire and distance
ourselves from the Russian threat”
“History doesn’t show a relationship between physical stature and political
skill”
Lech Kaczynski (who is 5ft 5in)
