june gloom on 10/4/2010 at 16:45

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I thought we weren't hateful enough for you Kokes?

This is sad news. What's Poland's plan for succession?

Enchantermon on 10/4/2010 at 17:00

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New election.

Koki on 10/4/2010 at 17:29

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This is election year, so Lech's brother Jarosław will win by a landslide thanks to sympathy vote.

Zillameth on 10/4/2010 at 18:04

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There will be election within three months. The impact of the president's death on the government is relatively minor, because in Poland the prime minister holds the bulk of executive power. Several key members of the parliament died, but the legislative branch does not rely on any single person to work, and vacant seats are filled automatically. A bigger issue, in purely practical terms, is the death of the head of the national bank and several top military commanders. It's not like Poland is suddenly left without a bank and an army, but there will be consequences.

But that's just a cynical damage assessment. The basic truth is, of course, that a hundred people died on duty. Some of them were very respected. Many of them were totally apolitical. All of them boarded that plane because they had an important matter to take care of.

Another aspect of this tragedy is that Polish politics have become very bitter in the last twenty years, with several different visions of the country struggling against each other. Sometimes it feels like the country is too small to hold them all. Many of the people who died today represented one of those belief systems. Personally, I disagreed with pretty much everything president Kaczyński said, but he obviously wasn't a bad person - he just believed in a different future for the country. Now he and many people like him are gone, and so is our chance to reconcile.

demagogue on 12/4/2010 at 14:09

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Well this is one national crisis going on... I still think Kyrgyzstan wins on the political crisis-front for the week, since there's been a full-on presidential ousting with the masses taking sides. This is more of a shakeup.

But anyway, tragedies suck. For the decent people, it's a real human tragedy. For the misanthropic jerks, it'd be of course much better if the poetic justice were more about why they're actually jerks (and non-violent), not a random accident that only builds them sympathy. Something like getting forced out of office or something... And of course it's unacceptable for innocent, decent people to be collateral damage to any justice, poetic or otherwise, or violence to be a part of it period for that matter.