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Deputy Chairperson Meczyslaw Lysy becomes chairperson of «official» Union of Poles

The Main Council of the “official” Union of Poles in Belarus (UPB), at its meeting on Saturday, appointed Deputy Chairperson Meczyslaw Lysy to be acting chairperson after Stanislaw Siemaszko had handed in his resignation earlier in the week, citing family reasons.

Mr. Lysy, who heads the Minsk branch of the Union, is to perform the functions of the chairperson until the next UPB convention scheduled for 2013.

The Union of Poles in Belarus split into the so-called official UPB, that is, the one recognized and backed by the Belarusian government, and an “unofficial” (unrecognized) UPB after Andzelika Borys was elected leader of the Union at a convention held in March 2005 and the Belarusian justice ministry declared her election illegitimate. At a government-orchestrated repeat convention held a few months later, Jozef Lucznik, a retired Polish language and history teacher, was elected new leader. Supporters of Ms. Borys contested the legitimacy of the repeat convention, accusing the government of installing loyal people at the UPB helm.

Many of the UPB members, including its founder Tadeusz Gawin, refused to recognize the new leader, siding with Ms. Borys. At a conference held in Hrodna in September 2009, Stanislaw Siemaszko, a 57-year-old local businessman who ran hotels in Hrodna and Shchuchyn, was elected to succeed the 73-year-old Lucznik, but the Polish government still regarded Ms. Borys as the only legitimate leader of the Union.

In June 2010, Ms. Borys surprisingly stepped down as leader of the Warsaw-backed unofficial UPB and Andzelika Orechwo was elected to succeed her.

Ms. Orechwo and other members of the unofficial UPB are warmly received by high-ranking Polish officials, whereas the leaders of the official UPB, including Mr. Lysy, are banned from entering Poland.

“We support the idea that the Belarusian Poles should not be divided into friends and foes,” Mr. Lysy told reporters in May 2010.

In the previous month, he had his Schengen visa cancelled by Polish border guards when he was attempting to cross the border into Poland where he said he planned to attend to business affairs and matters relating to the UPB’s activities in the cultural sphere. //BelaPAN