Acting President and
Aleksander Kwaśniewski Komorowski became acting president on 10 April 2010 following the
death of President Lech Kaczyński. His first decision was to announce seven days of
national mourning beginning on 10 April. According to the
Constitution of Poland, Komorowski was required to set a date for the next presidential election within 14 days of assuming the position, the election date coming within 60 days of that announcement. On 21 April, his office announced that the election would be held on 20 June. In the
election, he got 41.54% of votes in the first round and then faced
Jarosław Kaczyński, who got 36.46% of votes in the first round. In the runoff Komorowski was elected president (8 933 887 valid votes, 53,01%) and formally took office on 6 August 2010.
Presidency in Warsaw, 6 August 2010 Following the death of
Władysław Stasiak, the chief of the
Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, Komorowski appointed Jacek Michałowski to succeed him on an acting basis. A high number of vacancies following the Smolensk crash necessitated numerous other appointments. On 12 April, he appointed retired General
Stanisław Koziej head of the
National Security Bureau in place of the late
Aleksander Szczygło. On 29 April 2010, Komorowski signed into law a parliamentary act that reformed the
Institute of National Remembrance. On 27 May 2010, Komorowski nominated
Marek Belka, former Finance Minister and
Prime Minister (2004–2005) of a then-leftist government, to be the
president of the National Bank of Poland in place of the late
Sławomir Skrzypek. Following his election, Komorowski announced that he would resign from the Sejm on 8 July 2010, and thus cease to be a marshal and an acting president (his successor as an acting president was the next marshal of the Sejm
Grzegorz Schetyna, who held the position for about a month before Komorowski's formal inauguration). On 25 May 2015, following his defeat in the second round of the
2015 presidential election, Komorowski conceded the presidency to rival
Andrzej Duda, after the latter won a 51.5% majority. His term ended on 6 August 2015, when Duda was sworn in as a new president.
Attitude towards Ukraine On 22 February 2015 he supported the idea of the
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to introduce a UN peacekeeping mission in Donbas. On 9 April, during a visit to
Kyiv, he spoke from the rostrum of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. During his speech, he stated: "There will be no stable, secure Europe if Ukraine does not become part of it, and only the blind can not see the presence of Russian troops in the Donbas." Politicians in Ukraine and Poland called the speech historic. On 2 July he visited
Lviv, where he received an honorary doctorate from
Lviv University. During a joint press conference with Poroshenko, he stated that he would create his own institute to deal with
Polish-Ukrainian relations. ==Personal life==