Poland's Return to Normalcy

On Sunday, Poles voted for a new president in an election noted less for its outcome than for its tragic circumstance—the emergency vote followed the April 10 plane crash that killed the previous president and his wife along with the head of the Polish central bank, the armed forces chief of staff, and 84 other high-ranking Polish officials. Bronislaw Komorowski, a pro-business centrist, defeated Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of the dead president. A nationalist right-winger when he was prime minister from 2006 to 2007, Kaczynski had reinvented himself for this election as a just-about-moderate candidate. That this national tragedy was followed by an otherwise unremarkable election is testament to Poland’s long road to political normalcy. The crash did not undo Poland’s political system, as many feared; it turned out to be the final step in its normalization.