WARSAW: What Jaroslaw Kaczynski lacks in size, Poland's diminutive opposition leader more than makes up for in political appetite and acumen.
In keeping with his reputation as a political puppetmaster, the leader of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party has tapped Beata Szydlo, a 52-year-old coalminer's daughter, as his choice for prime minister ahead of Sunday's parliamentary election.
It appears to have been an inspired choice.
The party, which is tipped to win the election, envisions a conservative, strictly Catholic Poland that is vigilant of its interests within the European Union, hostile towards migrants, but mindful of the needs of Poland's poor.
Idolised by fellow right-wingers, the polarising 66-year-old gets under the skin of Poland's centrist and left-wing opposition, with some accusing him of having authoritarian tendencies.
Kaczynski kept a low profile in campaigning ahead of May's presidential vote, which saw his greenhorn protege Andrzej Duda defeat Bronislaw Komorowski, a veteran politician backed by the centrist ruling Civic Platform (PO) party.
Five months later, Szydlo, who bears a fleeting resemblance to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is tipped to pull off a similar victory with a platform that promises lower taxes and more generous family benefits.
Kaczynski, meanwhile, has played "bad cop", resisting EU pressure to take in a share of the tens of thousands of migrants on the move through Europe.
The former prime minister argues that Warsaw should contribute financially to EU efforts to solve the migrant crisis, but without accepting refugees -- a position polls show most Poles supporting.
"I admire his tenacity, he has stuck to his principles despite media attacks," Marcin Galazka, a Warsaw antiques dealer, told AFP.
"Despite many challenges, he remained politically active," Galazka addded, referring to the 2010 death of Kaczysnki's identical twin.
Then president Lech Kaczynski was among 96 senior Polish officials killed when his jet crashed in Smolensk, eastern Russia.
A PiS victory on Sunday, which would give the party control of both the presidency and government, would create a situation reminiscent of 2006-7 when Lech Kaczynski was president and Jaroslaw prime minister.
- Scheming urchins -
The siblings grabbed the limelight early with a short-lived stint on the silver screen as children. The pair starred in the popular 1962 Polish film "The Two Who Stole The Moon", about a couple of scheming urchins.
A cat lover who never married, Jaroslaw lived with his mother, to whom he was very close, until her death in 2013.
He has dedicated his life to politics, seemingly to the exclusion of everything else, disappointing female admirers drawn by his strong personality and old-world charm, according to biographer Michal Krzymowski.
A lawyer with strident anti-Communist views in the 1970s, Kaczynski joined dissidents in the underground opposition that blossomed into the Solidarity movement in 1980 and sparked the fall of the Communist regime nine years later.
He was close to Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, who was elected president in 1990, but battled with him for more than a decade after the two fell out over political strategy.
For years, his highly combative nature worked against Kaczynski, preventing him from forging the alliances needed to wield real power.
But that changed in 2001 when he and Lech created the Law and Justice (PiS) party.
By 2003 Lech had been elected mayor of Warsaw, which served as his springboard to the presidency in 2005.
Jaroslaw led PiS to a narrow defeat over Civic Platform in general elections the same year, promising to root out the corruption that had plagued the previous leftist administration.
The victory ushered in an era marked by shrill infighting within government and a row with the European Union over Poland's weighting in EU decision-making.
PiS's mismatched coalition with a populist agrarian party and a far-right party soon fell apart and elections in October 2007 ushered in a liberal PO government led by Donald Tusk, now EU president.
Kaczynski has been a relentless critic of his arch-foe Tusk, insisting he failed as prime minister to pressure Moscow to guarantee a thorough investigation of the crash that killed his brother.
AFP
