A planned vote yesterday on a resolution recognising Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism was abandoned after the opposition rejected a last-minute attempt by the ruling party to include a reference to the 2010 plane crash in Smolensk that killed President Lech Kaczyński.
Previously, all groups in the Sejm – the lower house of parliament – had expressed support for the resolution drawn up by the foreign affairs committee. However, subsequently the Law and Justice (PiS) party submitted an amendment.
The newly added text said that Russia was “directly responsible for…the crash of Polish Air Force Flight 101 in Smolensk, Russia in April 2010 in which 96 people on board were killed, including the President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński” and other high-ranking Polish officials.
Smolensk was an “attack decided at the highest level of the Kremlin”, says Jarosław Kaczyński ahead of the 12th anniversary of the crash.
Donald Tusk's government then “covered up” the incident as part of a “macabre reconciliation with Russia”, he adds https://t.co/5ae0gHJj3B
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 4, 2022
Official Russian and Polish investigations found the Smolensk crash to have been an accident, caused primarily by pilot error. However, PiS – which is led by Lech Kaczyński’s twin brother, Jarosław – claims that it was deliberately caused and accuses the government of the time – now in opposition – of being involved.
Since coming to power in 2015, the PiS government has spent millions of zloty on re-investigating the crash. While it claims to have uncovered proof that the tragedy was indeed deliberately caused, no such conclusive evidence has yet been presented.
After PiS proposed the amendment to the resolution yesterday, the entire opposition refused to vote on it, resulting in a quorum not being reached and the vote being annulled. The opposition wanted to then hold a vote on the previously agreed version of the resolution, but the speaker of parliament, Elżbieta Witek of PiS, refused.
Wyciągamy karty do głosowania i zrywamy kworum! Nie pozwolimy, żeby ukryta opcja rosyjska czyli minister Мацеревич wkładał szprychy w koła ustawy uznającej Rosję za państwo wspierające terroryzm. Ten człowiek to hańba dla Sejmu i hańba dla Polski! pic.twitter.com/2bSpP2v8J9
— Anita Kucharska-Dziedzic – posłanka na Sejm RP 💪⚡ (@AnitaKDZG) December 1, 2022
Paweł Kowal, an opposition MP on the foreign affairs committee, accused PiS of “destroying the compromise” worked out between different parties.
“Poland is now facing the whole world as a country whose Sejm has not adopted a resolution recognising Russia as a terrorist state,” added Kowal, quoted by PAP. “We are absolutely outraged by this.”
Borys Budka, head of the largest opposition caucus, called it “disgraceful” that Antoni Macierewicz, the PiS deputy leader who chairs the committee re-investigating Smolensk, “is still trying to impose his lies” about the tragedy.
Macierewicz himself, however, accused the opposition of being “pro-Russian” and of “not wanting to tell the truth about Russian terrorism”.
He noted that a Polish court earlier this year ordered the arrest of three Russian officials accused by Polish prosecutors of causing the Smolensk crash.
In October, the upper house of parliament, the Senate, where the opposition has a majority, unanimously approved a resolution recognising Russia as a terrorist state. The text did not include any mention of Smolensk.
Main image credit: Serge Serebro, Vitebsk Popular News/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 3.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
