PiS MPs want Lech Kaczynski statue in Gdansk

Lech Kaczynski. Photo: DR-N.

The MPs also want Gdansk’s Zwyciestwa (Victory) Avenue to be renamed after one of the key figures of the Solidarity movement, Anna Walentynowicz.

"He [Kaczynski] was connected with the city, lived and worked here,” Fotyga said, adding that a committee to promote the plan was now awaiting a response from Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz.

Lech Kaczynski, who died in the Smolensk plane crash in 2010, was a member of Solidarity in the 1980s and advised Lech Walesa in the early days of the movement.

The issue of the statue reopens, if it was ever closed, a certain ambivalence about Kaczynski, who was widely seen as a rather divisive president.

Jaworski said that Lech Kaczynski had been an "unquestioned service to the city," adding that he had "saved the shipyards.”

Adamowicz in 2011 turned down a petition organised by local people – with 2,000 signatures - to change the name of Zwyciestwa Avenue.

About 100 companies are located on the avenue and 500 private addresses, in addition to the Opera Baltycka, Gdansk Polytechnic and Multikino.(jh)