Poland: Mazowiecki government falls as voters and strikers oppose austerity

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The first round of Poland's presidential elections took place on Nov. 25. Before the vote, the elections were already seen as a turning point. The first free elections at national level for decades, they were to select a successor to General Jaruzelski, the Stalinist architect of martial law in 1981 and undoubtedly the most hated man in Poland during the last decade.

Jaruzelski was appointed president last year in observance of the "round table" agreement between the Stalinist bureaucracy and Solidarity, according to which he would act as a "guarantor of stability" for a certain transition period. As government popularity fell, labor protests increased, and the round table itself became questioned, this transition period turned out to be shorter than planned.

Lech Walesa topped the poll with 40 percent of the vote, a comfortable lead over the other contenders. Second came "Stan" Tyminski, (23 percent) a Canadian businessman of Polish origin totally unheard of before the campaign began. Prime Minister Mazowiecki, symbol of the "Polish road of economic reform," came only third, getting a mere 18 percent, while a representative of the Stalinist nomenklatura, Cimoszewicz, running as "the candidate of the left," scored 9 percent of the vote.

Two other candidates, representing the Peasants' Party and the extreme nationalist Confederation of Independent Poland, received 6 percent and 2 percent, respectively. The second round of the elections, on Dec. 9, will now be fought out between Walesa and Tyminski.

Walesa's lead in the first round came as no surprise. But few in Poland believed that Mazowiecki could fail to qualify for the run off. It is Mazowiecki's total humiliation at the hands of Tyminski that is the most significant event.

Yesterday and today

Let's recall the situation just one year ago. Mazowiecki was supported by the vast majority of the population; opinion polls showed him the most popular person in the country (considerably more popular than Walesa).

He had taken office in August 1989 as the head of Poland's first non-Stalinist government for 45 years and was commonly referred to as as "our (le. Solidarity's) prime minister"-epitomizing "their" defeat, that of the Stalinist ruling party (the PZPR), in the elections of June 4.

Allowed to contest only 35 percent of seats in the region (lower house of parliament), Solidarity-backed candidates had won 12 SOCIALIST ACTION Deter Turnles defense. Confident of mass support, Walesa told the government the brutal truth: "All your debates in parliament mean nothing. When this country's shipyards, mines, and steelworks go on strike, the government will collapse like a house of cards."

Shortly after, the workers at the Gdansk shipyards demanded that government ministers and Solidarity-sponsored deputies come to the yards to account for their actions. This demand would have been rejected out of hand in any normal Western "democracy." But the deputies meckly trooped off to Gdansk, to be booed and jeered.

Mazowiecki himself resisted, proposing a meeting in the Palace of the Archbishop of Warsaw instead. But he finally gave in, too. The abuse he received was such that the film made of the meeting was never shown on TV.

This episode was symbolic: the workers had demonstrated that they were still confident of their own strength and would rely on it, "parliamentary democracy" or no "parliamentary democracy." The government had admitted its own weakness. And the writing was on the wall for Mazowiecki.

"Free market" and the ax Yet despite attacking the government's economic record (no difficult task), Walesa has been unable to offer any alternative to the government's economic policies: He himself is firmly committed to the free-market reforms.

Indeed, during the election campaign he was frequently forced to admit that he had no program—although justifying this on the grounds that the powers of the presidency had yet to be specified (a new Constitution is still being drafted), and claiming he would present a program "when the time comes." On the eve of the first round of voting, he stated that he supported continuation of the Balcerowicz Plan, although again insisting it had to be "speeded up."

Nevertheless, Walesa does have one defi-