UT OF 100 seats in the Senate, the "Lech Walesa slate" got 92 in the first round, regime's candidates rarely got more than 10%. So, the eight remaining seats should go to the opposition in the second round. In the Diet, 160 of Solidarnosc's 161 candidates won in the first round, while only two of the regime's candidates were elected — what is more, these two were not members of the
In addition, while the electoral law provided for reserving 299 seats in the Diet for the government coalition, 35 of these were supposed to be elected on a central slate including the main leaders of the bureaucracy (with the exception of General Jaruzelski). These candidates had to win more than 50% of the votes in a single round in order to be elected, a provision that was designed to legitimize their Bonapartist role. However, only two of them managed to meet this condition! And this was despite Lech Walesa's appeal for a vote for the slate.
The stinging rebuke that the voters delivered to all the bureaucracy's candidates, and in particular those on the "cen18 imap oster to poteprey la leste tok t it tral slate" supported by Walesa, make it International Viewpoint #166 • June 26, 1989
Solidarnosc slate as unqualified support for the program and compromise policy pursued by the union's apparatus.
This contradiction was pointed up also by the high rate of abstention. One of the main ideologues of compromise in Solidarnosc, Bronislaw Geremek, said:
"The high rate of abstention is an important indication of the mood. A section of the voters linked to the opposition did not take part in the poll, probably because they reject any idea of compromise with the government....The danger uncontrolled social explosion remains.". Distrust of Walesa leadership aggravated
In an editorial in the June 7 issue of Solidarnosc's daily, Jerzy Holzer warned: "It does not seem that Solidarnosc can go any further [along the road of compromise] without further increasing the numbers of those who are frustrated." Moreover, rejection of the round-table [the talks between Solidarnosc and the regime] can also be seen in the factories.
Maziarski, editorialist of the main underground weekly that survives in Warsaw, wrote recently: "When we manage to find a third of our former members, that passes for a success, and it is not unusual for only a fifth of the personnel to fill in membership forms... People are simply afraid that in return for the legalization of the union, a certain number of elected positions and access to top union positions in the new establishment, we have abandoned demands important for the workers and their families. We see a suspicion appearing that the opposition camp's negotiators have given their go-head for a new operation to force the society to tighten
Distrust of the Walesa leadership of Solidarnosc has been aggravated by the fact that "the new leading aparatus of the union was created from above, by methods that have little in common with democracy."3 Moreover, a codicil to the law legalizing the union that limits the right to strike has gone over very badly with worker activists.
The June 4 vote, therefore, shows not only that the vast majority of Poles are looking forward to putting an end once and for all to the bureaucratic regime, but ment is also affecting these pillars of the regime. In a military constituency in Lublin, the general commanding the military region got only a third of the vote, with two thirds going to the Solidarnosc candidates.
In Wroclaw, the riot police, the ZOMO, favored Alternative Orange's surrealist candidate, Waldemar Fydrych, who is known as "the major."5
Bureaucracy tries to hold onto initiative
After an initial moment of surprise, the bureaucracy's mouthpieces have been trying to take advantage of the situation. To this end, they are attempting to hold onto the initiative. After letting it be known that the only alternative to the process set in motion by the round-table was "the Chinese solution," they recognized their defeat and pressed Solidarnosc to accept joint responsibility for the reforms that are underway. This in fact means sharing the responsibility not only for the political liberalization, of which the elections were the kingpin, but also for the economic policy, whose first effects threaten to touch off a wave of discontent among the workers.
Bijak, editor of Polityka, regime's principal weekly, wrote, for example: "The euphoria of victory, the pressure of the radicals, whose strength was shown by the election campaign, the belief that the election statistics reflect mechanically the real relationship of social forces and that the regime has been seriously shaken — all that may lead to dangerous conclusions."
### "Collaboration or civil war"
However, Bijak concluded: "The only good alternative for Poland today is collaboration of the two forces....Neither of them can govern the country by itself without an explosion and without the danger of a civil adventure....Precisely this plebiscitary victory of Solidarnosc can - and undoubtedly must - change the attitude of the opposition itself. I think that it should decide to take joint 1. Interview in Le Figaro, June 7, 1989. 2. Gazeta Wyborcza, June 7, 1989. 3. Article in Przeglad Wiadomosci Agencyjnych, quoted from Radio Free Europe, June 8. 4. Le Monde, June 7, 1989. 5. Fydrych ran for the same seat as Karol Modzelewski, an official Solidamosc candidate. He got an insignificant number of votes, less than 2%, but he campaigned rather for a boycott. 6. Polityka, June 10, 1989.
responsibility for running the country, for putting the economy right, for the fate of the reform."
Such blackmail — either you collaborate or it's civil war — has been supported by all the imperialist leaderships. Meeting with Margaret Thatcher on June 12, General Jaruzelski was assured of the British government's support in renegotiating the Polish debt with the Paris Club and the IMF. President Mitterrand is on his way to Warsaw, and has already let it be understood that his government is not going to lag behind in offering aid to the economic transformations underway in Poland.
Mitterrand will also push to get the EEC to act in a concerted way in this area, as has been confirmed by [chair of the European Commission] Jacques Delors. The same noises have been coming from George Bush and Helmut Kohl.
For the imperialist leaders, the choice is in fact a simple one — leaving General
Jaruzelski to his sad fate would mean taking the chance of lighting a revolutionary bonfire in Europe.
Helping him out of his straits on the other hand means not only avoiding the worst, but being able to dictate conditions for opening up the Polish market — and in time the other COMECON [Eastern bloc] markets — to imperialist products and capital.
Financial dependence of union on Western backers
Even if this opening may be limited and conditional, the game is worth the candle in these times of capitalist crisis.
The imperialists, moreover, are taking advantage of the influence they acquired over the Solidarosc leadership during martial law - an influence owing at least partly to the financial dependence of the Solidarnosc apparatus on Western aid in those years - to push the union to insure the process of transformation against social risks.
The Solidarnose leadership is walking backwards into the new political situation. In the spring and summer of 1988, it did everything possible to keep the strikes from spreading and then
Since then, it has to stop them.
tried to extinguish the social fires every time the wind of austerity revived them. The round-table accord that it signed in April has been seen by a good number of activists as a retreat.
In view of the extent of the defeat of the regime's candidates, the Solidarnosc leaders are trying to restore a bit of their legitimacy in the second round. On June 8,
Henryk Wujec, secretary of Lech
Walesa's
Committee,
Civic called for voting in the second round for the government candidates in order to choose the best.
In a letter addressed to all the provincial committees, he said that this is a "matter of honor"
and "civic duty."
Solidarnosc will organize rallies to enable these candidates to get a hearing.
Another indication of the embarrassment of the Solidarnosc leaders is that already on
June 5, Solidarnosc spokesperson
Janusz
Onyszkiewicz stressed that there could be no losers because "all the candidates had a common electoral program the program of the round-table."
Solidarnosc leadership's
The proposals in the crucial area of economic reform do not differ from the government's. In fact, this was one of the principal
POLAND problems of this election, and may, to some extent explain the high level of abstention. For example, the Civic Committee's electoral program stipulated: "We are going to demand a change in property relations. It is necessary to create the juridical bases for privatization or for a real socialization.
"State property must be in large measure transferred, sold or rented, to cities and local governments, to enterprises, through the creation of limited companies including cooperative and private capital. The state must not directly engage in economic activity."
In the wake of the elections, Lech Walesa thanked George Bush for the aid that he had already given, and pressed him to step up economic and financial aid so as to make it possible to expand foreign investment in Poland and convert the Polish debt into shares in the coun try's industry. He asked an American millionaire of Polish origin, Barbara Piasecka-Johnson, who has offered to buy out the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk, now in liquidation, to deliver his letter to the American president.
Before the the vote, moreover, in his visits to Italy, Strasbourg and Brussels, Walesa launched into appeals to Western investors to come to Poland and make their profits there.
The fact remains that the Polish economy is going from bad to worse. Industrial production in the first quarter of 1989 nose-dived, as a result of bottlenecks that the economic reforms have multiplied instead of eliminating. Market supply has felt the impact of this. Inflation has already topped an annually adjusted average of 100%. The free-market exchange rate for the zloty has collapsed, and price rises of around 300% for food products are expected in the fall.
If they accept the scheme of a great coalition in the parliament, as they have said they are ready to, the Solidarnosc leaders will have to take responsibility for these unpopular measures.
Decisive tests are on the horizon
The question of power is raising its head again in Poland. The Solidarnosc leaders are carefully holding back from seeking a solution to this question. Without anyone formulating it, the slogan of "all power to Solidarnos" has emerged from the ballot boxes.
In trying to preserve the status quo at any price - and even appearing to be a crutch for the bureaucracy — the Solidarnose apparatus is discrediting itself and helping to divide and disorient the workers. Nonetheless, the June 4 election indicates that decisive tests are on the horizon. *
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7. Tygodnik Powszechny, May 7, 1989. June 26, 1989 • #166 International Viewpoint
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