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"We want the truth about Smolensk" shouted in Parliament (Sejm) Law and Justice MPs during the speech of Prime Minister Donald Tusk before a vote on a Law and Justice Party bill concerning the return of the wreckage of the TU-154 plane.
During his speech Donald Tusk argued not to allow the voting on the draft bill prepared by Law and Justice to be included in the parliamentary proceedings. A bill aimed towards pressuring the Russian cabinet to give back Poland the wreckage of the TU-154 plane.
In voting the Sejm decided that during the current session it would not be dealing with the draft of the bill prepared by Law and Justice. 145 MPs voted for including it in the proceedings while 263 voted against and 8 abstained from voting.
"This is a disgrace which will be written into history and you will be mentioned in it together with those who are on the Polish disgrace list," said Law and Justice party Chair Jaroslaw Kaczynski, addressing Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The leader of Law and Justice spoke after the Prime Minister's speech and before the Sejm rejected the motion prepared by Law and Justice to include the draft of the bill concerning the wreckage of the TU-154 in the proceedings.
He stressed that regardless of what the Prime Minister had said, "in a political sense" those currently in power "are fully responsible for this air crash."
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Tusk assessed that the bill proposed by Law and Justice is "another initiative of those for whom the Polish state in its current shape is unacceptable." "The bill demands that the Parliament (Sejm) of the Republic of Poland turns to Russian Federation authorities because the Polish government do not take sufficient legal steps."
In the Sejm, Tusk said, among others, that "only people obsessed with hatred towards their own state and contempt for all their opponents, those deprived of the natural respect for the homeland they live in here and now, today, are ready to propose a draft of a bill, an address to the Russian Federation, an address to the Russian Duma, an address to the tsar in order to say that the Polish state does not function properly." According to the PM this kind of action became a part of the history of the Polish national treason.
"Yes, this is true. Russia does not act in connection with the Smolensk investigation they way we would we wish it to. We can see it every day." said the Prime Minister.
"There was a public declaration given by President Medvedev that within a few months the wreckage would return to Poland. Yes, we have a partner who in this case is, to put it mildly, inconsistent." admitted Donald Tusk.
According to Tusk, "it is necessary to have a lot of good will to acknowledge that the announcement of the Russian authorities, made a few hours before, that they were ready to start immediate negotiations concerning the technical conditions of returning the wreckage (...) to treat it as an announcement of quick decisions on the part of Moscow."
Jaroslaw Kaczynski accused Donald Tusk’s government of being “politically, one hundred percent responsible for the disaster” after it downgraded security arrangements of President Lech Kaczynski and fostered a hostile political atmosphere against the late head of state, as he has previously alleged.
As tempers frayed further in the lower house debating chamber, Kaczynski said that in the days following the plane crash, Prime Minister Tusk and Bronislaw Kaczynski - who later was elected as Lech Kaczynski’s replacement as president of Poland – “started a campaign to divide Poles” over the Smolensk air disaster. “The heinous nature of this campaign is unprecedented in the history of [independent Poland],” Kaczynski said.
In voting the Sejm decided that during the current session it would not be dealing with the draft of the bill prepared by Law and Justice. 145 MPs voted for including it in the proceedings while 263 voted against and 8 abstained from voting.