Poles of insanity

There's a hilarious article in the British press about the twin leaders of Poland, entitled Tweedlenice and Tweedlenasty play a game of Poles apart.

Aside from the unprecedented, in my memory, spectacle of twins running a major nation, it seems there's all sorts of wacky things about them:

Half a century after the European Union was created to forgive and forget the Last Great Misunderstanding, the identical twins who are Poland’s president and prime minister let off a massive stink bomb at last week’s summit by mentioning the war. To cries of horror – and some quiet chortles – Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski invoked Nazi atrocities in order to cut Germany down to size.

So Jaroslaw, the prime minister and elder twin by 45 minutes, had no hesitation in invoking the “incomprehensible crimes” against Poland as a means of raising the stakes in its battle with Germany over voting rights. This had become an obstacle to agreeing a revamped EU treaty. “If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would today be looking at the demographics of a country of 66m,” he said on Polish radio in an implicit reference to his country’s 6m war dead.

His point was that whereas the EU voting system currently gives Poland disproportionate clout, proposed changes based on population size would give most benefit to Germany’s 82m people while Poland with 38m people could be steamrollered – despite being the largest of the 10 countries that joined the enlarged club in 2004.

The 58-year-old Kaczynski twins had kept the summit guessing about which would turn up – some thought this a bit academic since they are nearly identical, though Jaroslaw plays the Mr Nasty to Lech’s Mr Nice. “Both are small, not very bright, mean-minded and resemble provincial solicitors – which Lech used to be,” said a journalist who has met them. ...

Lech is married to Maria, a tireless charity worker who sometimes acts as his special envoy. Jaroslaw, who has never married and lives with his formidable mother Jadwiga and her cats, is said to have a “dark side”, although the rumour is based on little more than his unaccountable absences. Recently he revealed he had no bank account and deposited his money with his mother. “I don’t want a situation in which someone pays some money into my account without my knowledge,” he said mysteriously. ...

The twins briefly stole the limelight at the age of 12 as stars of the 1962 film The Two Who Stole the Moon, playing a couple of greedy, cruel youths who dream up a plan to steal the moon and sell it.

You can't make this stuff up; it seems ever since Bush vs. Gore, the political world's turned unabashedly Shakespearean.

Uncredited photo of Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski from Der Spiegel.