A promise by Poland's president to restore Catholic values and purge communists from positions of power has been undermined by the revelation that his married daughter became pregnant after an affair with the son of a communist spy.The apparent gulf between President Lech Kaczynski's strict public pronouncements and the relaxed behaviour of his daughter raised eyebrows among critics of his stern conservative administration.
The government, headed by the president's twin brother, Jaroslaw, also stands accused of attempting to manipulate news coverage of the crisis.
"This shows an obvious dissonance between the kind of behaviour government expects from its citizens and what is actually going on within their closest family," said Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka, a member of the reformed communist party, the SLD.
"All those proclaimed Catholic 'truths' and sermons we've heard from the government about how we should live, what marriage is, how many children we should have, have taken a big slap from reality. Real life is much more complicated."
Lech Kaczynski, 57, took office two years ago after styling himself the defender of traditional Catholic and Polish ideals. His Law and Justice party promised a "moral revolution" and an end to corruption and loose moral standards.
Pictures portrayed the president's family as the embodiment of traditional Polish values. Campaign posters in 2005 showed Mr Kaczynski with his wife Maria, their daughter, Marta, and her then husband, Piotr, and urged voters to follow their model Catholic example.
This struck a chord in deeply religious Poland, helping the twins to victory with an agenda that critics say has encouraged racism and open intolerance of such historical foes as Russia and Germany.
Pressure on media critical of the government followed, with high-profile campaigns against anyone suspected of the slightest link to Poland's communist former rulers.
These included often groundless "exposés" of alleged former spies, ranging from the Solidarity trade union leader Lech Walesa to Jacek Kuron, a human rights campaigner.
Opponents of the Kaczynskis face investigation and harassment by the government's anti-corruption bureau. One opposition politician committed suicide during a visit by the bureau's investigators.
But the family image on which Poland's swing to the Right was forged has been badly dented. It has emerged that Mr Kaczynski's new son-in-law, Marcin Dubieniecki, is an SLD activist whose father was a communist informer.
The president's daughter Marta, 27, gave birth to her second daughter last week, two months after her discreet wedding to her lover Mr Dubieniecki. Their speedy and distinctly unCatholic civil marriage followed her equally speedy and unCatholic divorce.
Jerzy Owsiak, "Poland's answer to Bob Geldof", said: "The Kaczynskis have been naming and shaming everyone else. Now it turns out the devil is in their own family. They are small-minded, backward-looking people with no idea what to do with power in modern Poland."
Critics see the Kaczynskis' failure to make their own family live by the rules they want for Poland as a symptom of an unravelling strategy. A law to purge 1.5 million suspected communists from official posts has been ruled illegal. The divorce rate has doubled.
"For all their ambition, they don't control very much," said Malgorza Zajac, 35, a market research executive in Warsaw. "We have the EU, we have the internet, we are confident. Events like Marta Kaczynski's new marriage confirm the growing sense they are just ridiculous and irrelevant. Poles want jobs and better pay, but the Kaczynskis are busy fighting condoms and secret agents."
The president's office responded by email: "The press office sees no need to comment on this matter."
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