A train to the platform
The well-known joke about Hungarians is that they are the sort of nation that enters the revolving door behind you, but leaves it in front of you. In the case of the Poles, it seems that they are the sort of country that starts the week with two political parties, and ends it with at least four. Add to that the potential resignation of two leading government ministers and the continued struggle for power inside the ruling party and you have one of the most eventful weeks in Polish politics for some time.
It started optimistically enough, with Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek and the rest of the Solidarity Election Action (AWS) leadership attending a much-trumpeted policy congress that was to have signaled the relaunch of AWS following the debilitating internal divisions of the last few months. Yet it did not take long for the carefully laid plans to go wrong. At the conference itself, what ought to have been an opportunity to present a confident new beginning was rapidly transformed into what might easily have been a rally of the opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), as keynote speakers successively took the stage to launch into a full-blooded criticism of AWS and the Polish right as corrupt, incompetent and divided. This well-meant laundering of dirty linen in public left Buzek publicly embarrassed and made wonderful fodder for the evening news. Voters wondering which way to vote in the fall were left with no doubt as to what the answer was or, rather, was not.
To add to AWS' misery, the next day saw one of the constituent members of the AWS movement the Conservative People's Party (SKL) vote at its national meeting to leave the AWS coalition and run in the upcoming elections together with the new Civic Platform (PO) movement. Most observers now expect a permanent split between a more moderate, free-market right grouped around the PO, and a more traditional, conservative right around what remains of AWS. In the short term, moreover, the departure of SKL leaves Buzek and his AWS colleagues with an endless number of headaches. For a start, the decision immediately raised the question of what to do with the two ministers in Buzek's cabinet Defense Minister Bronislaw Komorowski and Agriculture Minister Artur Balazs who departed AWS with SKL and are now therefore theoretically in opposition to the government in which they are serving. In the short term, Buzek has decided to keep them on because of their expertise, and the view that to change two key ministers six months before elections makes little sense.
AWS is also consumed by an increasingly complex and Byzantine power struggle that threatens to completely destroy the movement in a short period of time. On the one hand, AWS is locked in a power struggle between broadly speaking the camp of Buzek and Solidarity leader Marian Krzaklewski on the one hand, and the renascent former Interior Minister Janusz Tomaszewski on the other. Since the latter's acquittal by a Warsaw court three weeks ago of charges that he had concealed a past as a collaborator of the communist secret police, Tomaszewski has been on the offensive, seeking a return to the powerful position in AWS he held prior to the trial. Yet both Buzek and Krzaklewski remain fearful that any return to official positions now would give Tomaszewski a springboard to take over AWS as a whole following what seems to be inevitable election defeat. For that reason, they were able last week to block his nomination to the post of AWS secretary general, but the result has been only to further anger Tomaszewski and deepen his ambition.
By the same token, the return of Tomaszewski to the political fray has also caused further splintering of AWS itself. Firstly, a group of SKL politicians refused to follow their party into coalition with PO, and declared the intention to create yet another right-wing party within AWS, made up broadly of politicians opposed to Tomaszewski and those AWS politicians who have until now functioned in the movement as independents. Masterminding this effort is Tomaszewski's nemesis, the former head of the prime minister's chancellery, Wieslaw Walendziak. Parallel to this effort is another initiative, this time with its titular head being the increasingly popular Justice Minister Lech Kaczynski. Kaczynski has rapidly carved out almost folk-hero status for himself among the public for his bold fight against crime and corruption, and his ability to do what has eluded all previous justice ministers: putting known mafia bosses behind bars. Kaczynski and his brother, Jaroslaw, are on the verge of setting up an alternative to AWS, riding these themes of cleaning up politics and the judicial system. It may yet be that this initiative and that of Walendziak's will come together as one, but for the time being they represent but yet another fragmentation of the ruling movement.
Against this background, AWS' opinion poll ratings continue to plummet, now reaching the depths of 8-9%. Only six months ago, the result of AWS leader Krzaklewski in the presidential elections of 15% was regarded as a disaster; now, many AWS politicians or rather, what remains of them would regard a similar result later this year as a miracle.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl.
