Mourners weep for their First Lady
Thousands pay respects as Maria Kaczynska's body is flown home from Russia
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Your support makes all the difference.Black-clad mourners holding Polish flags took to the streets in their thousands yesterday to watch the body of the country's First Lady return to lie in state with her dead husband as rumours abounded that the President's twin, Jaroslaw, was poised to step into his brother's shoes.
The reception given to the coffin containing the body of Maria Kaczynska, the popular 67-year-old wife of President Lech Kaczynski, was still more emotionally charged than the return of her husband's body on Sunday.
Mrs Kaczynska's coffin, draped in a large Polish flag, was flown in from Russia. In pouring rain, an honour guard of Polish soldiers carried the coffin across the tarmac where the presidential couple's only child, their daughter Marta, and the President's twin brother Jaroslaw knelt down and wept as they paid their respects. To most Poles Mrs Kaczynska was a far more popular figure than her husband, and thousands of mourners showered the hearse carrying her coffin to the presidential palace with red and white tulips and roses – the colours of the national flag – and chanted Maria in unison.
A Polish government spokeswoman broke the grim news that Mrs Kaczynska had been identified only from a "wedding ring and fragments of varnish on her fingernails".
She was one of the 96 leading Polish political and military figures who perished when the Polish presidential plane crashed near the Russian town of Smolensk on Saturday in what has been described as Poland's worst political tragedy since the Second World War. The party had been on its way to a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the infamous Katyn massacre in which thousands of Polish officers were murdered by Soviet secret police in 1940.
In an attempt to fill the gaping political vacuum caused by the crash, Poland's acting President, Bronislaw Komorowski, has pledged to announce a date for early presidential elections today. Under the Polish constitution polling will have to take place within 60 days, making a June election likely.
The key question being asked yesterday was whether the President's twin brother and former conservative Law and Justice Party prime minister Jaroslaw would attempt to step into his late brother's shoes. "Everything is possible, including Jaroslaw Kaczynski running for president," Daniel Passent, a leading political commentator told Polish television last night.
Opinion polls held before the crash suggested that President Kaczynski was far behind the other contenders for the post in terms of popularity. Jaroslaw was ousted as conservative prime minister and replaced by the liberal Donald Tusk in the 2007 general election.
But party politics took a backseat for most Poles yesterday. Marek Podgorska, 17, was one of hundreds of Polish students who had been given the morning off classes to witness the event: "The whole class feels that this is such a terrible tragedy. We just asked our teacher and he let us come here," he said. "None of us liked President Kaczynski's politics that much, but that does not matter now," he added.
Mrs Kaczynski's coffin was placed next to her husband' in the palace foyer yesterday paving the way for the official lying in state of the presidential couple. "We want every Polish citizen to be given the opportunity to pay their respects in front of the coffins," a palace spokesman said.
A full ceremony to mourn the dead is expected to take place on Saturday. Russia's Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, will be among the scores of foreign leaders in attendance. The burial of the crash victims will take place on Sunday. The 96 coffins containing their bodies are scheduled to be placed on Warsaw's Pilsudski Square to allow Poland to pay its last respects in an act of national mourning. The late President and his wife will be buried in Wawel castle in the southern city of Krakow.
The forthcoming vote was regarded as a possible sea change in Polish politics which would lead to improved relations with Poland's erstwhile enemies of Russia and Germany and a more positive attitude to the country's EU membership. Recent opinion polls have suggested that voters want to see the liberal trend continue and put the country's acting liberal President, Bronislaw Komorowski, ahead in the presidential race.
But in the aftermath of the disaster, there has been speculation that, given the wave of public empathy for his dead brother, Jaroslaw might be persuaded to run. The late President's twin has so far refused to declare his hand, insisting that he needs time to mourn.
The first signs that he might run for office surfaced yesterday in Poland's Rzeczpospolita newspaper. In an editorial it suggested that Jaroslaw was poised to declare: "I will continue my brother's work," and stand for election.
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