LONDON -- "I am afraid that with Jaroslaw Kaczynski as prime minister, Poland will become more extreme, more anti-European and a more xenophobic country," warned Bronislaw Komorowski, a member of the opposition Civic Platform party, when the second Kaczynski twin was made prime minister by his brother, President Lech Kaczinski, in July. He could have added that Poland is becoming more anti-Semitic, more homophobic and much more vengeful toward former communists and collaborators.
The Kaczynski twins, chubby 57-year-olds whose baby faces remind everyone that they first shot to fame as child actors in the 1960s, are identical in both their appearance and their politics. They are nationalist, Catholic and conservative (as mayor of Warsaw, Lech banned gay parades and called the organizers "perverts"), which is why they appeal to the left-behinds of Polish society, the rural, the poor and the uneducated, who provided most of the votes for their Law and Justice Party last year.
Then they promised that they would never occupy both of the great offices of state, and Jaroslaw remained as party leader while Lech took the presidency. But the man he appointed as prime minister instead, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, showed an unexpected streak of independence, so two months ago Lech fired him and appointed Jaroslaw in his place.