POLAND: The elevation of Poland's Kaczynski twins means double trouble for some, writes Daniel McLaughlin
Warsaw mayor Lech Kaczynski became Poland's new president yesterday, with a vow to realise the "moral revolution" that his conservative party promised when sweeping elections earlier this year.
He replaces Alexander Kwasniewski, who served the maximum 10 years in office but saw his socialist allies trounced at the ballot box, allowing Mr Kaczynski and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, to lead a resurgence of the Polish right that has worried many liberals.
"The state is not performing its duties properly," said Mr Kaczynski after taking the oath of office before a joint session of Poland's two houses of parliament. "For that reason, it must be purified and rebuilt."
A former activist with the pro-democracy Solidarity trade union, Mr Kaczynski said "corruption and criminality" had blighted Poland's transition from communism.
"During this time there was too little justice, solidarity and honesty. In this respect we need deep and profound changes," he declared. "We expect a great change in our political life and in society. I want to give our lives a new shape."
The pugnacious Kaczynski twins alarmed liberals at home and abroad during a hard-fought election campaign, by backing the death penalty and suggesting that homosexuals should not be allowed to teach in schools. As Warsaw mayor, Lech repeatedly rejected requests to hold gay pride parades through the city.
Their euroscepticism and appeal to traditional Catholic values struck a chord with voters in Poland, many of whom are dis-illusioned with free market reforms and were happy to eject a socialist government that had become mired in sleaze.
The twins' populist rhetoric has prompted fears of a purge against the left, however, and the new government has already disbanded an intelligence agency allegedly dominated by former communists.
Many Poles feel the country never reckoned fully with its communist past: Mr Kwasniewski was a rising star in the old Soviet-backed regime who, after brokering a political truce with Solidarity, then replaced its leader Lech Walesa as president in 1995.
"Our country requires that old accounts be squared, but it also needs accord and unity," Mr Kaczynski (56) said yesterday.
In contrast with his media-savvy predecessor, the stocky Mr Kaczynski appeared a little nervous, forgetting to raise his hand as he took his oath. He completed it with the words "so help me God" - a phrase that Mr Kwasniewski, as a professed atheist, declined to use in his two inaugurations.
The former communist chose to stay out of most domestic political wrangles, but his successor has pledged to be a more "active president, who uses his powers".
Critics deplore the amount of power now concentrated in the hands of the Kaczynski twins, with Lech as president and Jaroslaw - the elder by 45 minutes - leading the biggest party in parliament and seen as pulling the strings of the prime minister.
"As far as politics and decision-making go, our president isn't called Lech Kaczynski but Jaroslaw-Lech Kaczynski," complained Jan Rokita, a leading opposition politician. "There is no doubt that we will have a 'double president'."
Coalition talks between Mr Rokita's Civic Platform (PO) and the Kaczynskis' Law and Justice party (PiS) collapsed in acrimony after the elections, jolting financial markets that saw the PO as a reliable economic partner to steady the populist PiS.
That spat sent the PO into opposition and the PiS into a political marriage of convenience with the far-left Self Defence party and the ultra-conservative League of Polish Families, both of which enjoy strong support among poor, rural voters.
They have warned the PiS that they will not support any of the potentially painful liberal economic reforms that most analysts say Poland needs to boost its economy and help reduce 18 per cent unemployment, the highest in the European Union.
"Undoubtedly we need an economic policy that will combine action to trigger fast growth with action to solve social problems - with unemployment first on the list," Mr Kaczynski said in a 20-minute speech punctuated by frequent applause.
Following the inauguration ceremony, Mr Kaczynski attended a special mass at Warsaw's St John's Cathedral, and then took command of the military in a ceremony on a large square in the capital.
Mr Kaczysnki has sought to play down his reputation as a firebrand, speaking of forging stronger ties with Moscow, Berlin, Paris and Brussels while building on Mr Kwasniewski's burgeoning relationship with Washington.
"I pledge an active role in preparing a new project for the EU after the collapse of the constitutional treaty," he said. "Our goal is a union, an organisation with lasting, close and institutionalised co-operation between states based on the value of solidarity."
Alongside Tony Blair, Mr Kwasniewski was President George Bush's main European ally in the invasion of Iraq, where, despite public disapproval, 1,500 Polish troops are deployed and Polish officers command an international force of 4,000 men. But the new Warsaw-Washington relationship is due an early litmus test, with a decision on whether to withdraw Polish soldiers from the Gulf expected some time next week.