Poland rejects Jaroslaw Kaczynski as exit polls give Bronislaw Komorowski lead in presidential election

Poland's recent national tragedy produced an election yesterday in which the former prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, failed to make a comeback by succeeding his late twin brother as president, two months after the latter was killed in an air crash along with many others of the Polish elite. According to various exit polls for TV stations, the frontrunner, Bronislaw Komorowski of the governing Civic Platform party, won a lead of between 5 and 12 points over Kaczynski, although the contest goes to a second round on 4 July, as Komorowski did not get the 50% needed to win outright. Eight others who stood yesterday will drop out, and Komorowski is expected to benefit from the left's vote which was better than expected, on a predicted 15%. The election came four months early, fought in the shadow of the air accident at Smolensk on 10 April, when a plane crashed in heavy fog while taking politicians, officials, generals, and diplomats to Katyn, in Russia, the scene of the massacre by Soviet secret police of Poland's officer class in 1940. Lech Kaczynski had been president from 2005, and previously mayor of Warsaw. Komorowski, the speaker of parliament, and an ally of prime minister Donald Tusk, has been acting president since the air disaster. The outpouring of national sympathy encouraged Jaroslaw Kaczynski to try to replace his twin. He marked their 61st birthdays on Friday at the Krakow cathedral where Lech is buried. A former prime minister whose rightwing Law and Justice party governed from 2005-7, Jaroslaw has been the more formidable strategist of the pair, but his administration proved chaotic, divisive and confrontational at home and abroad. His twin's death softened a notoriously abrasive outlook, but a talking point of the presidential election concerned the degree to his transformation from bruiser to healer was genuine, or merely tactical. While Komorowski was expected to win, his campaign failed to inspire, although, unlike Kaczynski, he is pro-European Union. While mainly ceremonial, the president can veto legislation, powers that Lech Kaczynski used to stymie Tusk and which Jaroslaw hoped to continue.