Jaroslaw Kaczynski declared his candidacy for a presidential election following the death of his twin brother, Poland’s late president Lech Kaczynski, in a plane crash in Russia on April 10.

Kaczynski, a former prime minister who heads the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS), Poland's biggest opposition party, said he wanted to continue his brother's conservative mission.

"Poland is our great shared obligation. We are required to overcome our personal pain and to take on this mission despite the personal tragedy. That's why I have taken the decision to run for the presidency of Poland," he said in a statement.

Thanks to his intensive and smart campaign, Kaczynski almost doubled the result predicted by the opinion polls before his marathon started. Due to the circumstances, the campaign was different than any other before. Kaczynski, who by many was regarded as a divisive political figure, has reinvented himself after the Smolensk tragedy.

Despite an upsurge of sympathy for the Kaczynski family, Jaroslaw Kaczynski lost the elections to acting President Bronislaw Komorowski, of the centrist Civic Platform, but he won as a leader of the Law and Justice party, which has doubled the number of its supporters.