TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061989/06198900.038

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 13.4 KB | 253 lines

                                                                                COMMUNISM, Page 24

POLAND

A Humiliation For the Party


But Solidarity handles victory with calm and realism

By Thomas A. Sancton


    The contrast was stupefying. In December 1981, Solidarity
leader Lech Walesa was arrested along with more than 6,000
fellow union members in a martial-law crackdown that seemed to
shatter their movement and, with it, all hope of freedom and
reform in Communist Poland. Last week Walesa found himself at
the center of a very different situation. His forces had just
whipped the Communist Party in the country's first truly
democratic elections since 1947, causing a constitutional logjam
that for the moment left unclear exactly how and by whom Poland
would be governed. Walesa, 46, his trademark mustache now gray
and his stocky build padded with extra poundage, warned
supporters shortly after the vote, "It's too early for
congratulations."

    Perhaps so. But it was not too early for the world to
recognize Poland's remarkable political performance for what it
was: in the year of Communism's historic identity crisis -- a
time of glasnost in the Soviet Union, brutal repression in China
and political unease in the rest of Eastern Europe -- Poland had
launched a democratic experiment unique in the Communist world.
"It makes us rethink the proposition that Stalinism is eternal,"
said a U.S. official. "Now we don't know for sure that Stalinism
is above being reformed."

    The official results announced at midweek showed a
Solidarity landslide. Union-backed candidates won 92 of 100
seats in the newly created Senate and 160 of 161 Sejm (lower
house) seats set aside for opposition and independent
candidates. Although the remaining 299 Sejm seats were
automatically allotted to the Communists and their allies, only
five of their candidates garnered the required 50% of the vote.
Most of those unfilled seats will be decided in runoff elections
on June 18.

    For the so-called national list of the Communist Party and
its allies, a special slate of 35 prominent candidates who ran
unopposed, there might be no second round. A majority of
voters, eager to reject the whole Communist system, scratched
all but two names off the ballot; 33 candidates were defeated
and their seats thrown into limbo. That unexpected result
triggered a constitutional crisis, since the electoral law
requires a full 460-member Sejm but provides no mechanism for
filling the vacant seats. Until these legal obstacles are
resolved, the Parliament cannot fill the presidency, a powerful
new post that was expected to go to party leader Wojciech
Jaruzelski. Among the defeated national-list candidates were
some of Jaruzelski's most reform-minded allies, including Prime
Minister Mieczyslaw Rakowski, Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak
and Politburo member Jozef Czyrek. Their presence in Parliament
was deemed crucial to forming a working relationship between the
Communists and the opposition.

    The Communist wipeout threatened to shatter the delicate
power-sharing agreement that the party and Solidarity
negotiated earlier this year. Not only was there a fear of
backlash from angry Communist hard-liners opposed to compromise,
but there was also a serious question of how the country could
be governed when its ruling party had been overwhelmingly
rejected by the electorate.

    In an unprecedented concession statement, party spokesman
Jan Bisztyga told a nationwide television audience on Monday
that the "elections were of a plebiscite character, and
Solidarity has achieved a decisive majority." Promising that the
government would "not back away from the road of democracy and
reforms," he called on Solidarity to accept "co-responsibility"
for running the country. But Solidarity leaders rejected that
astounding invitation to join a coalition government, preferring
to remain in opposition and cooperate with the Communists on a
case-by-case basis only.

    On Thursday, Communist and union officials held an
emergency closed-door meeting aimed at breaking the impasse.
Determining how to fill the 33 vacant seats was at the top of
the agenda. One proposal called for a new vote on those seats
in the second round of elections. But many union supporters
argued that they should remain unfilled.

    Ironically, Poland's resounding display of democracy seemed
likely to make other Soviet-bloc regimes -- already bedeviled
by reformist rumblings -- rethink the wisdom of opening up the
electoral process. Said a senior Western diplomat in Warsaw:
"It may have been the worst possible result for glasnost in
Eastern Europe. Every Communist Party in the region must now be
aware that democratization is the beginning of the end for it."

    Perhaps no Soviet satellite was studying the results more
carefully than Hungary, which is preparing for its own
multiparty elections next year. Commenting on the Polish vote
last week, the national Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet said the
Communist defeat "was not only humiliating but also constitutes
an incalculable source of danger."

    The Polish experience posed a special dilemma for Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev. On the one hand, Warsaw's bold
moves toward economic and political liberalization would have
been unthinkable had Gorbachev not come to power in 1985 and
launched his own reforms. On the other hand, the crushing defeat
of the Polish Communists could be exploited by Soviet
hard-liners as an argument against political reform at home. In
fact, Gorbachev's party seemed in little danger of suffering a
Polish-style humiliation at the polls. For one thing, the Soviet
reform impulse is coming down from the leadership rather than
welling up from a grass-roots movement, as in Poland. For
another, Gorbachev does not have a large, well-organized
opposition to contend with and has ruled out for now the idea
of multiparty elections. Yet the debacle of the Polish party
must be giving him second thoughts about how much further he can
push political democratization without threatening Communist
authority.

    Whatever reservations Moscow may have about the Polish
election, the possibility of Soviet intervention seems
extremely remote. Eight years ago, in the heyday of Solidarity's
first incarnation, Leonid Brezhnev forced Jaruzelski to break
the union. But Gorbachev has long since laid the interventionist
Brezhnev Doctrine to rest, repeatedly promising the East
European regimes "mutual respect" and "non-interference in each
other's internal affairs." Moreover, Gorbachev considers the
reform-minded Jaruzelski an important ally in promoting what he
calls "new thinking" throughout the Soviet bloc. Finally, the
Soviet leader seems to regard the economic and political
experiments in Poland and Hungary as important laboratory tests
for the Soviet Union. Thus most analysts doubt that Gorbachev
will intervene unless the Polish situation degenerates into
chaos.

    What finally pushed the Jaruzelski government to the
bargaining table was the same thing that sparked the popular
uprisings of 1956, 1970 and 1981: economics. Although the regime
could drive Solidarity underground, it could not make the
country's hopelessly inefficient factories produce more or put
food on empty grocery shelves. For more than seven years,
Jaruzelski tried to carry out economic reforms while refusing
to negotiate with Solidarity or democratize the political
structure. The results were dismal: industrial production fell
steadily, while the foreign debt climbed to $39.2 billion and
inflation crept toward 100%. When public discontent erupted in
a series of nationwide strikes last spring and summer, the
government finally abandoned its half-a-loaf strategy and in
desperation steered into one of the most astonishing U-turns in
modern political history by calling for talks with Walesa's
banned union.

    The so-called round-table negotiations, which began in
February, were based on a fundamental trade-off: the regime
would consent to a large degree of democracy in exchange for
social cooperation on the economy; Solidarity would help secure
that cooperation in return for its legalization and a share of
power. The centerpiece of the agreement was the cumbersome
electoral law that granted the Communists and their allies 65%
of the seats in the Sejm and allotted 35% to the opposition; a
new 100-member Senate, with veto power over all legislation, was
to be chosen in open elections; a powerful presidency, with
control over the armed forces and security apparatus, would be
filled by the Communist-controlled Parliament. Solidarity
allowed the party and its allies a guaranteed majority on
condition that the next legislative elections, to be held in
four years, are fully competitive and that the President is
popularly elected by 1995. The union also extracted a number of
other concessions, including legalization of the Roman Catholic
Church and establishment of an opposition press.

    In granting these extraordinary concessions, the Communists
made three key assumptions. First, that only a Solidarity-led
opposition could secure economic cooperation from the public
and attract the billions of dollars in Western aid needed to
finance the recovery. Second, that by bringing Solidarity into
the political process, the party could make it share the onus
for the belt-tightening policies that would have to be adopted.
Third, that by setting an early election date, the government
could prevent the opposition from organizing an effective
campaign.

    The last assumption was wildly off the mark. Within days
after the April 5 signing of the round-table agreement,
Solidarity had selected most of its candidates, named a campaign
committee, opened its national election headquarters in a former
Warsaw bank, set up regional offices across Poland, and
recruited 40,000 campaign workers. Within a week, printing
presses were churning out millions of handbills, posters and
stickers bearing the familiar red SOLIDARNOSC! logo and photos
of Lech Walesa. Although Walesa was not running for office, he
stumped tirelessly for Solidarity candidates around the country.
In contrast to Solidarity's slick campaign, the Communists and
their allies flopped miserably on the hustings. Observed a
Western diplomat in Warsaw: "That the Communists could not even
organize their own campaign is really something. Can it be that
they are even more incompetent than they have seemed for 40
years?"

    Once the parliamentary problems resulting from the
elections are resolved, the government must grapple with the
deepening economic crisis. Both sides know what they avoided
saying on the campaign trail: effective economic reform will
require stringent austerity measures -- including plant
closings, layoffs and higher consumer prices. Those steps are
sure to provoke strong resistance from the working masses that
form Solidarity's main constituency. Solidarity is also likely
to face internal squabbles, as factions that supported the union
during the campaign -- including the right-wing nationalist
Confederation for an Independent Poland and the Freedom and
Peace youth movement -- begin to push their own agendas.

    Party leaders too face internal resistance from hard-liners
and mid-level bureaucrats opposed to any further erosion of
their power and prerogatives. Ironically, some of the most
intense criticism may come from the party-backed official trade
union, the O.P.Z.Z., which was originally set up to replace
Solidarity but has become one of the more bitter opponents of
factory shutdowns and employment cuts.

    Hopes for economic recovery ultimately depend on Western
financial aid, something Polish officials now expect as a
reward for democratic reforms. In particular, Warsaw is anxious
to restructure its burdensome $39 billion foreign debt.
Negotiations are now under way between Polish officials and the
Paris Club of Western creditor nations, to which the bulk of
Poland's foreign debt is owed. West Germany, Poland's largest
trading partner and biggest single creditor, last week resumed
long-stalled debt-rescheduling talks in hopes that some
agreement can be reached before Chancellor Helmut Kohl visits
Warsaw late next month. President Bush, who warmly applauded
last week's elections, is due to visit Poland next month. Bush
had earlier outlined some of the economic steps he intended to
take. Among them: eliminating tariffs on selected Polish
imports, stimulating private U.S. investment in Poland, working
with the Paris Club on debt rescheduling, and encouraging the
International Monetary Fund to grant standby credits to Warsaw.

    As for the Polish people, they seemed remarkably subdued at
this moment of democratic triumph. Compared with the unbridled
euphoria that accompanied Solidarity's birth in 1980, there was
little public celebrating after the election. Perhaps it was
because people sensed the gravity of the moment. More
important, they had seen their hopes dashed too many times
before. "In Polish society, nobody has the idea of being a
winner," explained Solidarity official Alfred Janowski on a
visit to Washington last week. "We are so used to always
losing." It was to counter such defeatism, rooted in two
centuries of foreign occupation, that Walesa told a campaign
rally in Gdansk last month, "Whoever doubts must ask himself,
`Has there ever before been such a chance as now?'"