Poles Protest President's Burial With Kings

Kacyznski continues to polarize nation
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 15, 2010 5:47 AM CDT
Poles Protest President's Burial With Kings
Birds fly in front of the Wawel castle, in Krakow, Poland. Lech Kaczynski will be buried alongside Polish kings in the castle after a service on Sunday.   (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

Poland's late president is proving to be as divisive in death as he was in life. The unified sense of national mourning that followed the death of Lech Kaczynski and scores of other dignitaries in a plane crash has been split by an increasingly bitter dispute over plans to bury him alongside Polish kings and heroes in Krakow's Wawel Castle, the BBC reports.

The president—who died with an approval rating of just 30%—"was an ordinary and good man, but there is no reason for him to lie in the Wawel among the kings of Poland," says acclaimed film director Andrzej Wajda, calling the burial decision "misplaced" amid the high emotion that followed the crash. Hundreds of people protesting the plan have taken to the streets of Warsaw and Krakow for two consecutive nights.
(More Lech Kaczynski stories.)

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