Posted on 09/08/2001 11:52:15 PM PDT by Pericles
Sunday September 9, 10:21 AM
Poles set to hand electoral humiliation to a divided Solidarity
WARSAW, Sept 9 (AFP) - A dozen years after it toppled communism, Poland's Solidarity is set for a colossal defeat in elections later this month which could see it disintegrate as a political movement.
When Poles vote on September 23 they are likely to install the ex-communists in power with nearly half of the popular vote, according to the latest opinion polls.
Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek's Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) coalition is hovering around the eight percent needed for a coalition to win seats.
It is no longer a question of winning the election, says Lech Walesa, the movement's former leader and president from 1991-1995, but "saving the honor" of Solidarity and "preventing the ex-communist left from gaining a political monopoly".
"The only positive effect of the coming defeat is that it will wipe clean the political scene. Solidarity will return to its role as an opposition trade union and the political parties will have to reorganize again," Walesa told
The center-right parties which sprang from Solidarity have experienced ups and downs before, suffering a rout in the polls in 1993 that led to four years of leftist coalition governments under the SLD.
While the death of Solidarity as a political force has been pronounced more than once before, Polish columnist Marek Matraszek noted recently that it now faces a particularly difficult future.
Most likely AWS will not be the main opposition grouping on the right in the next parliament, and may not win seats at all, making sticking together and staging a comeback in four years a difficult prospect.
Hopes were high when AWS and the liberal Freedom Union (UW), which also had roots in the Solidarity democracy movement, won elections and formed a coalition government in 1997.
But much heralded medical, pension and education and administrative reforms were poorly administered, caused chaos, and led to little visible improvement in services.
The roaring economy, the one big feather in the AWS cap, has stalled.
Growth in the first half of 2001 was an anaemic 1.9 percent compared to 5.4 percent a year ago. Unemployment, near 16 percent, continues to rise as the children from the 1980s baby boom enter the job market.
Adding insult to injury, the finance minister announced last month that the budget deficit would triple next year to 88 billion zlotys (23.3 billion euros, 20.8 billion dollars) or 11 percent of gross domestic productunless taxes were hiked and radical cuts made to social entitlements.
AWS has been slowly self-destructing since the Freedom Union left the government last year over a dispute over economic policy.
Walesa, running as an independent candidate, won only one percent of the vote in a presidential election last October and Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former communist, was easily re-elected in the first round with 54 percent of the vote.
The AWS presidential candidate, Marian Krzaklewski, received 15.6 percent of the vote, finishing third behind an independent centrist candidate who garnered 17.3 percent of the vote.
Andrzej Olechowski, a former foreign and finance minister, capitalized on that showing and formed the centrist Civic Platform to compete in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Civic Platform has attracted prominent defectors from both AWS and the Freedom Union, which may also fail to win seats in the next parliament.
The government's popular corruption-busting justice minister, Lech Kaczynski, was sacked this summer and has formed the conservative Law and Justice Party which could take 10 percent of the vote.
"What is left of Solidarity?" mused Walesa.
The answer, come September 24, may be precious little.
Back in '92 I think Bush Sr., before he lost the scond term, was in a unique position and with a unique ability and understanding to somehow ease the East away from socialism (I do not know why his son has been such a failure in the international scene).
Clinton could have ushered in a Russia and an Eastern Europe that was productive and prosperous. Instead Clinton's big initiative was to get Poland into NATO at a time Poland can't afford the membership.
Poland's membership does not even stabilize the East, it makes the Russians more insecure, more hostile!
When Poland and other such nations needed our help, to transfrom Clinton's America instead spent to bomb and continues to spend billions and then occupy parts of Yugoslavia.
That is just one example. Why? Because the State Dept. came under the sway of a partnership of certain industries and internationalists (like Strobe Talbot who said borders in the future would not exist) that do not seek a world composed of free sovereign and free market republics.
The internationalists want to push forward an agenda that for lack of a better terminology hopes to produce a one world government without borders, this group is given succor by certain industries that see favor in such a set up.
This combined group (first to partner in the Clinton administration) seek world hegemony over banana republics that supply the industrial partner of this Western hegemon wanting group (this group holds no national allegiance) with cheap raw goods and cheap labor and in return the second partner, the Internationalists get to remake the national will of those beaten down nations into their third-wayist image.
They want someone dazzling, charismatic, to lift them out of their doldrums. The employment situation in Poland really sucks. There are many goods in the stores, but the average Pole cannot afford them. They want either a Reagan to give them hope - or a Clinton to entertain them. The Solidarity guys are just too dull. That's all.
He is continuing what Clinton did, forwarding the International Elite's plans. This is only surprising because you think the president and his party and his parties "ideology" actually make the decisions that matter.
Example #2 - NAFTA
Jonathan Ledgard
In Warsaw
A reformed communist, Aleksander Kwasniewski is reaping kudos even as the government flounders
THE president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, skitters across his cavernous office, arm outstretched. His twin enthusiasms of tennis and tippling lend him a top heavy aspect. Dainty below, stout above.
He apologises for being a few minutes late. "The Bulgarian ambassador," he explains. "He was describing the problem in his country today of how to address a prime minister who used to be a king. 'Why, thank you, your highness prime minister'." Mr Kwasniewski laughs. What he exudes, in his cheer, is not so much charisma as self-assurance. He was not born to power - no king he - but he seems, down to his expensive Swiss watch and fine-cut suit, to have been destined for it.
He looks tired. Occasionally his fluent English slips into Polish. "You'll have to forgive me. It's been a hard week."
Little wonder. After years as the Slavic Tiger, Poland has begun to flounder. Hard days are ahead. Warsaw has lost its boomtown lustre, unemployment is rising, wages falling, consumer confidence is approaching an all-time low. Beancounters in the finance ministry are partly to blame. Their overestimation of tax revenues this year left an already unpopular government with a 2.8 billion pounds hole in its budget.
Mr Kwasniewski rolls his eyes: it is not his government, after all. He belongs to the opposition former communists, nowadays known as the Social Democrats. The sitting government on the other hand is the battered remnant of Solidarity, an alliance of conservatives, nationalists, and the old Solidarity trade union that triumphed over communism. Barring a miracle only a Polish Pope could render up it will be put to the sword by the Social Democrats in this September's general election.
Until then Mr Kwasniewski benefits from a nice arrangement: woes belong to the government, successes reflect well on him.
There are three important things to know about Mr Kwasniewski. One, he was a communist. Two, he is not any more (really) [this "really" is by Jonathan Ledgard, not CO]. Three, he is young. As a stripling, he rose effortlessly through the party, serving as minister for sport in the last communist government.
When the whole edifice came tumbling down Mr Kwasniewski helped negotiate a peaceful transition to democracy through the "round table" talks.
Dissidents like Adam Michnik remember Mr Kwasniewski as a man they could talk too. "We felt he understood the world, that he was trustworthy," says Mr Michnik.
High praise indeed. But then it helped that Mr Kwasniewski was not a true believer but a pragmatist looking to further his career.
Poland itself has also changed. The country is a NATO member now and, with 40 million people, the largest European Union applicant. Now, with the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel soon to retire, Mr Kwasniewski has emerged as Eastern Europe's leading statesman.
Proof of that came earlier this month with a speech he made at Jedwabne, which was the scene of a now infamous massacre.
"The most important speech in postwar Polish history," raves a Western diplomat. "The hardest speech I've ever written," Mr Kwasniewski reckons. He had to walk a high wire without a net: atoning for an atrocity while disarming those nationalist Poles who saw no reason to apologise.
The facts of the case, emerging from new historical studies, have shaken Poland to the core.
On 10 July, 1941, Jedwabne's Jews were rounded up, cudgelled, and burned alive in a barn by their Catholic Polish neighbours. "Fratricide," is the president's word for it. Poland did not exist at the time, he points out, and could not protect its citizens. "But the Republic of Poland - the standards of a civilised state - should have persisted in Polish hearts and minds." Mr Kwasniewski used television to underline his statement at the memorial in Jedwabne. He wore a yarmulka and flanked himself with rabbis.
It was an opportunity to put Poland in a better light with American Jews, many of whom, unfairly, regard Poles as anti-Semites. "But the speech was also for ourselves," Mr Kwasniewski says. "We Poles have to look truth in eye. Any truth. And say: it was, it happened."
A handful of nationalists will continue to deny Jedwabne. No matter. Mr Kwasniewski's approval rating is close to 80 per cent. His message, observers reckon, will win out.
Back to point number three. Mr Kwasniewski is still only 46. He will be 50 when he leaves as president. What next? He waves aside the question. "What matters is Poland today," he says firmly. "Joining Europe, keeping close with America, reaching out to Ukraine."
The gossip among Warsaw insiders, however, is that Mr Kwasniewski is putting out feelers in the sports world. He would like a career in international sports politics, preferably in football. A savvy frontman for FIFA perhaps? Or else of UEFA?
"I'm a fan of Arsenal," he announces as I rise to leave. A big fan, as it happens - the result of a few months spent working in north London in 1974. "I sent the club a letter congratulating them on their last season and they sent me back a scarf."
The president has the look of a fan. He rubs shoulders with Messrs. Blair and Bush but his eyes still light up at the mention of football. But what about FIFA? Mr Kwasniewski smiles again. "First let's get Poland into Europe."
All Material Subject to Copyright
FreeRepublic NEEDS Your Help!
Donate Here by Secure Server </font size=4>
Or Mail your check to:
FreeRepublic , LLC
PO BOX 9771
FRESNO, CA 93794
The irony is that they failed to win part one of their agenda, the push into Central Asia. American/Western influence has left that part of the world most riki tik.
Ok, but I was referring to Junior W. Bush.
The west has been running around rejoicing over the rise in democratic governments, in Latin America, in East Europe, and (almost) in Russia.
("Too bad about China but they are at least learning capitalism")
The problem being that none of these places has any hint of a structure to sustain popular participation in a legitimate governmental scheme. They expect better pay, more markets, tourism, and free dental care as the FIRST rewards of change. When the country is already tottering in insolvency and when every politician has got to be trained into a new role - those things would take decades to obtain.
What they get are wage controls, robber barons, galloping debts, and the "pride" of membership in a defense pact that they cannot afford.
What kind of a reaction should you expect?
The failure of these so-called Democracies has much to do the manipulations of our government, e.g. Clinton-Gore administration, that engineered billions of our taxmoney into the hands of criminal Communists. These slime proceeded to buy/steal most of the assets of these oppressed nations.
The idea that the demand for free dental care etc. would be a significant contribution to causing the further degradations of these countries is not logical.
Of course they could talk to each other as anti-nationalist and globalist friends. And of course neither of them is really concerned what's good for Poland, but only how Poland can be controlled by the internationalists. Calling Michnik dissident and Kwasniewski reformed communists could be politically correct. There is a better name which encompasses their inner characteristic qualities - opportunistic parasites.
Ronald Reagan supported Solidarity because the existing Polish government was illegitimate, having been forced upon the Polish by the Bolsheviks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.