PRESIDENT MARY McAleese and a long list of foreign dignitaries are flying into a storm of protest surrounding the state funeral for the late Polish president, Lech Kaczynski.
After four shell-shocked days of mourning, hundreds of Poles took to the streets of Krakow yesterday to rail against plans to bury the late president and his wife, Maria, in the city’s hallowed Wawel Cathedral on Sunday.
Shouting “No to Krakow! Keep out of Wawel!” some 500 demonstrators marched through the city streets, livid at what they see as an unworthy elevation of Mr Kaczynski – who sharply divided Polish opinion during his lifetime – to the level of Polish kings, national poets and wartime heroes.
In an unprecedented move, hundreds of Poles picketed yesterday outside the Krakow residence of Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who announced the decision on Tuesday.
The row has shattered Poland’s week of mourning: more than 40,000 people have joined a protest group on Facebook while several thousand more have joined another group called: “I want to be buried in Wawel, too.”
“This is such a Polish farce,” said one protester, Kamila Przybysz. “With respect, Mr Kaczynski was a Warsovian and deserves to be buried there. Founding the Warsaw Uprising Museum was his most important, if only, merit. I don’t think this is enough [for a Wawel burial].”
During his lifetime, Mr Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw polarised public opinion like no one else with their fiery style of national conservative politics.
Polish critics were appalled at the friction they caused in Europe when they shared power from 2005 to 2007.
But Mr Kaczynski’s supporters say Wawel is an appropriate resting place for a patriot who helped bring down communism in 1989.
They have accused protesters of showing disrespect for the late president by disrupting the national week of mourning.
Members of Mr Kaczynski’s Law and Justice (PiS) party defended the plan yesterday, pointing out that many of those buried in Wawel were rivals during their lifetime.
“The tombs of Wawel has reconciled Poles in the past,” said Zbigniew Girzynski, a PiS member of parliament. “Who will remember our insignificant arguments in 100 years’ time?” Members of rival political parties have backed the plan, too.
“Mr Kaczynski died on duty as head of state and burying him in Wawel would be a symbolic tribute to all victims of Saturday’s tragedy and also to the officers murdered in Katyn,” said Jaroslaw Gowin of the ruling Civic Platform.
Mr Kaczynski and 95 others died when their aircraft crashed en route to Russia to remember 22,000 victims of the 1940 Katyn massacre.
After days of mournful tribute editions, grateful Polish newspapers have pounced on the row, with leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza dismissing the burial plan as “inappropriate”.
“The decision to bury him in Wawel is hasty and emotional,” it said in a front-page editorial. “This decision is sure to divide Poles.”
Left-wing politician Tomasz Nalecz, a candidate for the presidential election, said he opposed the decision – but out of respect, not disrespect, for the president.
“I admired him for one thing, his deep understanding of history,” said Prof Nalecz.
“I am not sure if Lech Kaczynski, a man who has so brilliantly felt history, would see himself among the Polish kings in Wawel.”
Time is running out for Warsaw to defuse the row and prevent the unthinkable: pickets outside a state funeral.
