Buddy, can you spare a vote?
Last week saw Parliament conclude what has turned out to be a marathon legislative task, namely the new electoral law for both the lower (Sejm) and upper (Senate) houses of Parliament from the next elections scheduled for October onward. In what has been a fascinating spectacle of political gamesmanship, poker-style bluffs and last-minute turnarounds, a law has emerged that has implications not only for the technical running of elections, but also for the Polish political scene in the medium and long term in ways that may yet generate surprises.
On the surface, the need for a new electoral law was drawn from the administrative reform of a couple of years back, which changed the number of voivodships and introduced a new layer of local government, the powiat. For example, two senators were elected from every old voivodship, but now that there are 16 and not 49 voivodships, this is unworkable. Other than that, the old system seemed to work reasonably well: despite Poland being constitutionally burdened with a proportional representation ballot system, the d'Hondt method of counting votes made it possible to generate large parties in Parliament and reduce the number of Parliamentary parties from about 40 in the heady days of the early 1990s to effectively four: Solidarity Election Action (AWS), the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), the Polish Peasant party (PSL) and the Freedom Union (UW).
However, Parliament went a lot further than it needed to have done in amending the voting sytem to make it workable. The biggest change, aside from a new drawing of constituency boundaries, was a move away from the d'Hondt system of vote counting to a new method, called the Saint Lague system, which favors middle-sized parties and discriminates (in terms of seats allocated in Parliament) against larger parties. All the more surprising since until recently AWS (along with the SLD) favored retaining the old system. The reason? Simple. Over the last year AWS has seen such a loss of its support, and growth in that of SLD, that it was becoming a possibility that the next elections would generate an absolute majority in Parliament for SLD. So the solution was for AWS to team up with PSL and UW in changing the voting system to increase the prospect of SLD leader Leszek Miller despite his inevitable victory of a plurality of votes in October not having an overall Parliamentary majority. It is not only UW, PSL and AWS who will benefit from the voting change. Another big beneficiary will be the newly established Civic Platform (PO) movement, which is registering a healthy (for this stage of the game) 15% in the opinion polls. Certainly it will encourage voters to go for PO now that they can be convinced that a PO vote is not entirely wasted.
Taken together, it does seem to be lining Poland and the SLD up for a scenario where Leszek Miller will be forced into an alliance with PSL to achieve power for SLD. That poses two challenges for SLD, however. One directly threatens Miller's chances of becoming prime minister, since PSL may decide to go for broke and demand the premiership for itself as the price of putting SLD in charge. And secondly, it opens up an even more fascinating prospect of SLD being denied power altogether if all the other parties in Parliament manage to cobble together an anti-SLD coaltion. Either way, it would be premature right now for Mrs. Miller to start ordering the curtains for her husband's office.
The fact that PO gained by these changes does not mean it hasn't lost out in another quarter, namely the issue of party funding. Other legislative changes passed at the same time last week increase the level of state-budget funding for parties, and limit the ability of parties to raise funds anonymously through the previous system of cash campaign contributions in return for vouchers that the parties issue as a record of receipt. This system clearly was open to abuse, as it allowed various shades of businessmen to donate freely with no record of their having done so. Yet it was a system that the PO essentially a volunteer force and not a proper political party was relying on to mobilize funds quickly. Many PO leaders commented darkly about the curious unanimity of establishment parties banding together to make a funding law change that directly affects the only political movement capable of taking votes from them.
The other big loser in the electoral law change is UW. In a surprise last-minute change, Parliament abolished the national list system, which allowed parties to allocate Parliamentary seats to politicians who had failed to get the necessary votes in their constituency to get in directly. This wonderful sytem bestowed enormous patronage on the party apparatuses, but above all benefitted UW, which as a party has historically been led by intellectual worthies who are hopeless political campaigners.
The last 10 years have shown how the political party system remains fragile and fluid, moving this way or that on the basis of historical accident or technical electoral rules. If Polish politics will continue to surprise us over the next nine months, it will in no small measure be due to the legislative changes of last week.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl
