He later aligned with another former anti-communist activist, Jerzy Buzek, and after Buzek was elected prime minister, he appointed Kaczynski minister of justice and attorney general in Out of office again by mid, Kaczynski teamed with his brother to form Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc , or the Law and Justice Party.
Its main focus was on the rooting out of corruption in Poland's government, which had reached epic levels by then. A year later, Kaczynski won election as mayor of Warsaw, Poland's largest city and capital. He held office from November of until February of , and gained a measure of infamy for banning an annual gay pride march in and , claiming that it was offensive to the city's public morals. In March of , Kaczynski announced his candidacy for the presidency of Poland.
The following September, the Law and Justice Party—headed by Jaroslaw—did well in parliamentary elections, and in the presidential election a month later, Kaczynski bested a candidate of the center-right party, Donald Tusk, by nine percentage points. In Polish politics, the chairperson of the party that received the majority in the last parliamentary elections is expected to be appointed prime minister, but Jaroslaw had said publicly that he would not serve as prime minister in order to avoid any charges of nepotism; the comment reportedly angered Kaczynski, and the two brothers did not speak for several days.
Taking office in December of , Kaczynski promised Poles he would abolish corruption in the government and restore the Polish republic's reputation on the world stage. He halted an ongoing privatization plan, which sold off formerly state-controlled industries, and voiced suspicions about the European Union EU , which Poland joined in Certain economic guidelines that EU member nations must follow had brought hardship to Poland's farmers, many of whom had supported Kaczynski's candidacy.
Kaczynski rekindled the fires of some longstanding animosity that Poles felt toward Germany over the Nazi era in June of , when he reacted to a satirical article in a Berlin newspaper that referred to him as a potato. He and Jaroslaw both responded with particularly vehement language, and Poland's foreign minister asserted that an official apology was in order. The German government was forced to point out that it had no control over a free press.
It was undoubtedly his parent's patriotism and his nation's tragic history, coupled with his admiration for his father that prompted Kaczynski to create the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising in during his tenure as the city's mayor. At the age of 12, the brothers shot to fame as the mischievous boys Jacek and Placek in the allegorical film Two Boys Who Stole the Moon.
Both then read law at Warsaw University, graduating in Little did Kaczynski know then that his subsequent move to Gdansk Danzig in northern Poland would prove pivotal to the rest of his life.
During the late 70s the Polish economy was under enormous strain and there was widespread social discontentment. Government policy sparked nationwide strikes, protests and riots. Some protesters and strikers were arrested by the authorities. In order to defend these victims a new organisation was formed, the Workers' Defence Committee KOR , a body that brought together the proletarian and the intelligentsia opponents of the regime; it was also one of the Eastern Bloc's most important manifestations of a new and powerful phenomenon, "civil society".
In , Kaczynski approached the KOR and began working for them, organising lectures and writing for dissident publications. In August the trade union Solidarity was born when there was industrial unrest in the shipyards of Gdansk, led by a flamboyant and brave electrician called Lech Walesa. This laid the foundation for what occurred later in Eastern Europe in — the collapse of Communism.
With the Communist authorities wishing to negotiate, Kaczynski found himself as one of the union's key advisers. Following the implementation of martial law he was arrested along with numerous others in December , and spent almost a year interned. Kaczynski was on his way to Katyn, the village where thousands of army officers and members of the Polish intelligentsia were executed in by Red Army troops, as the Soviets joined forces with Nazi Germany. Since , Poland had been struggling to obtain access to classified documents, as well as an official acknowledgment of the massacres, from Russia.
Kaczynski was a fierce proponent of making Katyn a pivotal element in Poland's relations with Russia. Last week, Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin , and Poland's prime minister, Donald Tusk, were the first leaders in both countries' history to mark the anniversary of the massacres together. Kaczynski, whose support for Ukraine's Orange Revolution and for Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili had led to difficult relations with Russian leaders, had chosen to participate in a separate ceremony.
Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw were born in Warsaw, sons of Rajmund Kaczynski, an engineer and a member of the Polish resistance during the second world war, and his wife Jadwiga, a philologist.
Both parents participated in the Warsaw uprising of and wanted to pass on their patriotism to the brothers. In this they succeeded — their mother recalled her sons singing the national anthem each night after saying their prayers. It was undoubtedly this passion for his nation's tragic history, combined with admiration for his father, that prompted Lech Kaczynski to create the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising in , while he was the city's mayor.
Kaczynski went on to become president of the Supreme Chamber of Control, and later worked for the Institute of Public Affairs and as a committee member within the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy. He worked as a professor at the the University of Gdansk in and , and from on served as a professor at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, according to his Web site.
Kaczynski held his first senior government post in , when he was appointed minister of Justice. The brothers combined politically in to form the right-wing Law and Justice National Committee party. And in , the increasingly popular Lech Kaczynski was elected mayor of Warsaw. During his time in the position, Kaczynski earned approval from voters for his tough stance on corruption.
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