SOLEMNLY standing to attention as sirens wailed, Poles fell silent across the country yesterday as they mourned President Lech Kaczynski and top officials killed in a fiery air crash in Russia.
Thousands of people observed the two minutes of silence outside the presidential palace in central Warsaw, in front of a sea of candles and flowers left by grief-stricken residents at a mass vigil overnight.
Motorists stopped their cars in the capital's wide boulevards and got out of their vehicles as emergency sirens blared at the stroke of noon, while black-edged television pictures showed people deep in reflection.
Earlier on a fog-shrouded morning that eerily echoed the weather conditions in which Kaczynski's plane came down Saturday, people flocked to churches in towns and cities across the devoutly Roman Catholic nation.
"This is yet one more national tragedy in our history. We Poles have had many. The loss of human life is hard to bear but we will cope," Zofia Szymczyk, 70, told AFP as she arrived for mass at central Warsaw's Church of the Saviour.
But the retired engineer said she was heartened by the international wave of sympathy, especially in Russia, which has had historically tense relations with Poland.
"They've declared a day of mourning for us, it's a very moving, human reaction," she said.
Russia, the European Union, the Czech Republic and Ukraine have all announced national days of mourning while the Brazilian government has declared three days.
At the Church of the Saviour Sunday, the faithful had flanked the entrance with flowers and candles for the Kaczynskis and the 94 other Polish dignitaries who perished, including most of the military's top brass.
Pawel Zak questioned the wisdom of so many key figures travelling together in an ageing Russian-built aircraft.
"How could they have allowed all these people, the president, all the military chiefs of staff, the central bank governor, to fly together in an old plane? It was a tragic mistake," said Zak, 45.
But the photographer added: "I'm impressed by the sympathy for us in Russia. It seems like an opportunity for some level of reconciliation."
History and politics have long come between Russia and Poland, a former Soviet satellite state that broke free from communism in 1989.
Kaczynski's delegation was headed to a memorial service for 22,000 Poles massacred by Soviet secret police during World War II, an historic wound which has still not healed despite the passage of 70 years. Their Russian-built Tupolev Tu-154 came down in thick fog near the Russian city of Smolensk on Saturday on its fourth attempt to land. Russian officials are investigating whether pilot error was to blame.
On Saturday night residents gathered for vigils news of the catastrophe broke. Flags with black sashes fluttered from balconies around the capital.
The tragic crash comes almost exactly five years after the death of Polish-born Pope John Paul II, and echoes the event which galvanised Poles the vast majority of whom are Roman Catholic in unity and sorrow. The death of Kaczynski has brought not only national grief but will also see Poles head to the ballot box before the end of June for an early presidential election.
Parliamentary speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, who under the constitution has assumed the duties of president, is required to set the date of an early election within the next two weeks.
A regularly scheduled presidential ballot was due by this autumn.
Komorowski, a liberal, was himself widely expected to run against the conservative Kaczynski who had been expected to seek a second term.
Source: Brunei Times
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