The ambassador suggests the candidates remember Ireland for the next round, writes ZUZANNA REDA
IT WAS the plane crash that changed everything. At 6am yesterday morning a handful of voters had already gathered outside the polling station where Dublin’s Polish community were able to cast their vote for the country’s next president.
It was a vote that should not have been until the autumn and it was a vote that had been a foregone conclusion. The governing Civil Platform’s (PO) candidate Bronislaw Komorowski was a shoo-in until the plane carrying the Polish president Lech Kaczynski crashed on April 10th last and reoriented it all.
Before his death, Kaczynski, the president elected in 2005, had slim chances of re-election and his support had fallen below 20 per cent. But the plane crash in Russia, in which 96 people, died put Kaczynski’s twin Jaroslaw in a much stronger position.
“When I voted in Dublin last time I queued for over two hours. I wasn’t planning to waste a Sunday and go this time,” says Aleksander Jakima, who works in the IFSC. “Until the catastrophe it was certain that Kaczynski would be defeated but I got frightened Jaroslaw could win.”
So he got up before 6am yesterday and went to the RDS.
“I am here to say No to the same guy to whom millions of us Poles said No in our last parliamentary elections in 2007. And, what is equally important, I want to distinguish myself from the part of the Polish nation which uses the catastrophe, the church and lies to influence the lives of the others.”
Emilia Bury and her husband – dressed in a “Polska” T-shirt – decided to vote for the first time since they moved here four years ago. “It is important this time. I would do anything to stop Kaczynski from getting to power,” she says. “I hope the candidate I am voting for will create a Polish Tiger, a brother of the Celtic one Ireland had.” The Polish ambassador in Ireland, Tadeusz Szumowski, said none of the candidates had campaigned in Ireland. “Bronislaw Komorowski visited London but he treated both islands as a whole. And the immigration patterns in Ireland are different – a lot of the Polish come here for a couple of years and go back, whilst our fellow countrymen in Britain tend to stay there for life. In case of a second ballot I would suggest the candidates to remember the Polish in Ireland,” he said.
The voters praised the organisation of this election compared to the chaos of parliamentary elections in 2007. Back then people were borrowing babies from their parents just so they could skip the queue and save themselves waits of up to four hours.
Whatever the outcome of the elections, some people already know they have made a terrible mistake. One middle-aged man started shouting “no, no, no” immediately after casting his vote. He realised he ticked a box by the name of a candidate he did not support, but according to the rules, he could not get a second ballot paper. If the “wrong man” wins just imagine how this man will feel . . .
Zuzanna Reda is the Irish correspondent for Poland's Rzeczpospolitanewspaper