Archive, 1989: Poland holds first free elections in more than 40 years | Poland

Poland faces crisis as union wins poll: Communists pledge to continue on path to reform

By Michael Simmons
6 June 1989

Poland is today facing the most serious constitutional crisis it has had to confront in the last 40 years of its stormy history.

Late last night, the ruling Communist party publicly conceded overwhelming electoral defeat at the hands of Solidarity, the independent trade union and mass opposition movement it originally tried so desperately to extinguish.

Although the party’s defeat was humiliating, its spokesman, Mr Jan Bisztyga, pledged that the government would stick to the path of democratic reform while acknowledging that Solidarity had won a decisive majority of the seats it contested in Sunday’s general election.

Exactly how the government proposed to continue is unclear. One possibility discussed last night is that the erstwhile authorities might turn to the constitutional court for advice on what to do now that the parliament and the leadership have been shorn of their most vital members.

Throughout the day, crowds gathered as results were posted on the doors of polling stations all over the country showing that people who hitherto were household names had now been consigned to oblivion.

But there has been no spontaneous demonstration of joy in the streets. The elections were orderly, as all sides have proudly noted, and the celebrations have been correspondingly muted.

All Poland knows there is some serious thinking to be done on the economy which is on its last legs, as well as the body politic.

Not only have eight members of the ruling politburo been summarily rejected by having their names deleted from a “national list” of the great and the good, but so has the prime minister, Mr Mieczysław Rakowski, along with several enlightened reformists on whom the country’s leader, Gen Wojciech Jaruzelski, had been depending to take the country out of crisis.

Solidarity, rejected as legal until a few weeks ago, seems to have total control of the newly created upper house of parliament, or senate. It has also apparently taken all 35 percent of the seats that it contested in the sejm (parliament). It has scored runaway successes in its heartlands of Gdańsk and has overcome divisions in its ranks in several other centres round the country.

The union’s leading thinker, Prof Bronislaw Geremek, said last night that he could not yet foresee the opposition taking part in government. “If Staninism is finally and completely rejected then we shall reconsider our position,” he said.

Solidarity was impressively sober rather than euphoric about the results. It is now clear to the union’s leadership that although turnout in the elections was much lower than it expected – a little over 60 percent – its victory has also gone beyond its wildest expectations.

The Solidarity leader, Mr Lech Wałęsa, urged supporters to tone down their excitement at the victory for fear of upsetting a reform process agreed by the government and opposition two months ago. “The elections should not divide us,” he said.

There is a new maturity about the union today and even a sense of sympathy for the defeated government reformists. Pro-Solidarity voters, it was pointed out last night, had voted for renewal; pro-party voters, however few they were, were voting for reform and against Stalinism.

Mr Wałęsa had on polling day urged supporters to vote for the reformists in the administration. The abysmal vote which seems to have gone the party’s way is an indication that this advice did not have much impact.

The splits within Solidarity did not mar its success. The pro-Catholic moderate who had advised the union in the past, Mr Władysław Siła-Nowicki, was soundly defeated by the pugnacious Solidarity stalwart, Mr Jacek Kuroń.

Down the road, it seems that the controversial former government spokesman, Mr Jerzy Urban, now head of Polish television and radio, has lost very heavily to a popular film actor. Success on the other hand has come to people who have spent long periods in recent years in prison or otherwise suffering from their beliefs.

The film director Mr Andrzej Wajda is now a member of parliament, and according to friends it will be a very long time before he makes another film. Also elected is Mr Adam Michnik, who occupies the philosophical position in Poland which is occupied in Czechoslovakia by the playwright Václav Havel.

The government and party spokesmen who have been so voluble in recent days were conspicuously reticent yesterday. They have many wounds to care for and many new arguments to prepare. They are confronted with a totally unprecedented situation.

Prof Geremek said the leadership might feel the people had turned away from dialogue and as a consequence might feel threatened.

Wałęsa takes instantly to the role of statesman

By Michael Simmons
7 June 1989

Dateline: Warsaw
Solidarity’s leader, Mr Lech Wałęsa, has been tactfully restrained in the immediate aftermath of his palpable successes in Sunday’s elections.

But he has not hesitated to act with a newfound sense of solemn authority. He has sent a message of sympathy to President Gorbachev in the Kremlin, declaring, “We have received news of the Urals tragedy with pain …” as if to the manner born. And, in the name of democracy, he has publicly appealed for peace in China.

The Communist party leader, Gen Wojciech Jaruzelski, by contrast, sets out for Brussels and London this weekend with only a figleaf of constitutionality to hide his shortcomings.

If there were no Warsaw Pact to buttress him, it is being suggested, then he would have folded up his tent and disappeared.

Life in Warsaw goes on as before. Queues form for rationed meat, the black market in hard currencies and rare goods persists and immaculate guards of honour strut across Victory Square to watch over the flame of the Unknown Warrior.

The general’s figleaf is that Mr Mieczysław Rakowski, the acerbic and tough-minded former journalist, is still technically prime minister until the sejm (parliament) meets in about a fortnight.

Then he and his government will resign. No inkling has been provided so far of whether he will be invited to try again. Mr Rakowski seems to have failed to win the 50 percent of votes, plus one, required to keep his own seat.

All sorts of forecasts are now on offer as to how Poland’s short-term future will unfold. One, of undiluted blackness, embraces the introduction of martial law, as militant opponents of Mr Walesa assert themselves and seek to gain the upper hand.

Others allow for Sunday’s election being declared null and void – for some obscure legalistic reason – and for the unlikely possibility that the PZPR, as the Communist party is known, could finish up as the opposition to the de facto representative body of Solidarity.

The union, on results which still have to be regarded as provisional, has won almost total control of the senate, or upper house of the sejm. It seems also to have won all of its 35 percent of the 460 seats in the sejm itself. The remaining 65 percent were uncontested by Solidarity and should have been “held” by the PZPR-led coalition. Exactly 35 of the coalition seats would have been filled from the “national list” if they had not been put out of contention by more than half of those who voted.

Subtract these 35 from the PZPR-led coalition’s 65 percent of seats and the sejm is suddenly without enough members to overturn the recommendations that will surely come down from the Solidarity-dominated senate.

Former Polish president and Solidarity founding leader Lech Wałęsa, May 1989. Photograph: Leszek Wdowiński/Reuters

Game set and match to Solidarity. Almost.
Gen Jaruzelski is expected to become executive president and should be able to arbitrate if there are otherwise insoluble differences between sejm and senate. “Let him arbitrate three or four times,” said an old PZPR hand, “and he will be so exhausted you won’t be able to stop him from stepping down.”

A different scenario assumes that the second-round elections on Sunday week will do nothing to strengthen the coalition’s position. Seats to be contested then are in the pocket of the PZPR anyway. This means the sort of deadlock just described between sejm and senate could lead the president to call a fresh election, perhaps in September. And the sinister corollary to that is that the party, as well as Solidarity and the rest, would be much more adroit in its footwork as the campaigns got under way.

None of these forecasts take account of the acute economic situation. Every third Pole, and a few more, declined to vote on Sunday. There is a minority, which could run well into millions, which cannot be bothered to clutch at straws any more.

Solidarity confirms election landslide: Polish Communists in ‘greatest-ever crisis’

By Ian Traynor
20 June 1989

Dateline: Warsaw
Solidarity emerged from Poland’s elections yesterday as the victor in every seat but one available to it.

It left the Communist party, after 40 years of monopoly rule, facing its gratest ever crisis in the wake of the “election earthquake”, a senior party official conceded.

Another senior party source admitted that it would be hard for the party ever to win a free election, but warned of catastrophe if the resulting parliamentary alignment failed to function harmoniously.

Although the final results are yet to be announced, Solidarity’s election headquarters reported that, following Sunday’s second round of voting, its candidates had won all 161 seats they were allowed to contest in the lower house, and 99 of the 100 senate seats.

Solidarity celebrates: Mazowiecki to be named Poland’s prime minister

By Michael Simmons
19 August 1989

Mr Tadeusz Mazowiecki, one of Solidarity’s most respected intellectual advisers, has been chosen as Poland’s first non-communist prime minister since the end of the second world war. His appointment is expected to be announced today in Warsaw by President Wojciech Jaruzelski.

“There are huge troubles, huge problems,” Mr Mazowiecki admitted yesterday after talks with President Jaruzelski at Belvedere Palace. “It won’t be easy. I am afraid of many things, but if I were only afraid, I would be a total pessimist. Somebody has to try it. I am a believer and I believe Providence cares for us.”

Mr Mazowiecki, who was interned for a year under martial law, went on: “Had I not believed this, I would not have taken it up. I have to believe it, but I know it is difficult.”

The 62-year-old widower and editor of the union’s weekly newspaper, Tygodnik Solidarność, told visitors to the parliament building yesterday that he had met the president as well as Cardinal Józef Glemp, Mr Mieczysław Rakowski, the Communist party leader, and the leaders of the new coalition parties, the United Peasants’ Party and the Democratic Party.

“This is definitely the final nail in the coffin of the leading role of the Communist party,” said the Solidarity spokesman, Mr Janusz Onyszkiewicz. “This is seen as something outdated. It is the end of the whole concept.”

Mr Mazowiecki said he hoped yesterday’s events had delivered Poland to a turning point in its history. “There are a few historic moments which show that Poles can strive for new solutions, unusual ones, really innovative ones, and that we can achieve something. I hope that such a moment is arriving psychologically now. I hope that people will feel that now there is a situation in which everything depends on us.”

But last night, he received another reminder of the sort of problems his government will face. The modest car taking him to his newspaper offices ran out of petrol. “For the premier to be, it is not very proper,” he said.

Asked later who he would have in his government, he said: “I have to think for a while. There is no time, but still I need some time.”

In contemporary Polish terms, Mr Mazowiecki’s qualifications to be prime minister are impeccable. He is cautious and had parliamentary experience in the Gomułka and Gierek periods. He is also a Roman Catholic and was a founder member of Solidarity.

To the hardline Communists, who have been bitterly and angrily haranguing Mr Rakowski over the last few days, he is of course something else. Mr Rakowski, no lover of Solidarity, is angry and, with President Jaruzelski, will today confront what could be a stormy session of the party’s Central Committee.

To some reformers in the party, however, the newly emerging Solidarity coalition is being seen in a more positive light. After all, said one of those who confronted Mr Rakowski yesterday, there had been 40-odd years of communism in Poland and “my wife can’t even buy a box of matches”.