The incumbent seemed a certainty for re-election, until the ruling party of his own country, Poland, turned against him, writes Slawomir Sierakowski.

The death of Poland’s president and many elite figures in Saturday’s plane crash in Russia rekindled memories of the wartime Katyn massacre.

President Mary McAleese joined the country’s Polish community today to mourn the loss of their head of state and scores of other passengers in a devastating plane crash.

Poles wept before their televisions, lowered flags to half-mast and taped black ribbons in their windows after hearing that President Lech Kaczynski and the upper echelons of the establishment lay dead in woods a short drive from the site of the Katyn forest massacre, where 22,000 Polish officers were killed by Soviet secret police in one of Poland’s greatest national traumas.

A week of national mourning has been declared in Poland after the country's President died in a plane crash.