Check or checkmate
In a dramatic showdown between government and opposition over the government's local authority reform plans, the Buzek team came out with what most observers agreed was a bloody nose at best. But many went further to raise doubts about the ability of the government to survive in the long term. If the scale of the damage has still to be clarified, there is no doubt about the real winners: President Aleksander Kwasniewski and the opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD).
Last week's vote in Parliament was over a crucial government bill to amend the number of voivodships from the current 49 to 12. This reform is part of a grander reform to totally revamp the structure of local government, as well as to change the balance of functions in the hands of central and local government in favor of the latter.
Although the reform had not figured highly in the election campaign last year of Solidarity Election Action (AWS), the government chose to make it the first flagship reform of its administration. Why? Because most of the other key reforms, such as that of the health service or educational system, are themselves dependent on a revamp of the functions of central government in the first place. To make such reforms work, local government reform had to be the bedrock.
At first sight it did not seem that the government would have much difficulty in passing the changes. The coalition has a respectable majority, and after all in the previous Parliament even the former government had talked about the need for local government reforms. Yet as the legislative process continued, it became clear that passing the reform would be no easy task.
On the one hand, resistance mounted among the governing coalition's parliamentarians, particularly within AWS. Some MPs genuinely felt that the need to oppose the disappearance of their province and respond to constituency pressures, while more radical parliamentarians saw the establishment of German Lander-style regions as part of a pernicious plot to break up Poland for absorption into the European Union.
On the side of the opposition, the SLD decided to switch from supporting local government reform to challenging its very principles, and when it became clear that the reform would happen anyway - sought to water it down. Yet the government still felt confident enough that it could muster enough votes to go ahead with a reform option with 12 voivodships.
To test the water for support of the "12" option, at the beginning of the voting process last week in Parliament, a technical amendment was put down by a coalition parliamentarian that revealed a hemorrhaging of support on a huge scale. It was clear the government would lose the final vote, and in a first act of capitulation the government agreed to support 15, rather than 12 voivodships in the Senate. This was an attempt to get the bill through Parliament at all.
The immediate result was the wielding of knives in the coalition ranks as the guilty men who had led the rebellion - coalition MPs Adam Slomka and Jan lopuszanski - were thrown out of the AWS parliamentary club. More MPs left in support, depleting the AWS (and therefore government ranks) by eight parliamentarians. The main fear now for AWS is that the renegade MPs will make good their threat to link up with the Peasants Party (PSL) in Parliament, and perhaps put together a rival right-wing coalition to AWS at the next election, running on a radical national-Catholic platform.
More threatening however than all the coalition bloodshed was a tactical masterstroke pulled off by President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who until the vote had been in lukewarm support of the government option.
Once it became clear the government was wounded, he moved in for the kill by declaring that he would veto any reform bill that fell short of proposing 17 voivodships, precisely the number that the SLD has been arguing for all along. That means that over the next couple of weeks the government will have to decide whether to stick to its new "15" option, at the risk of having a presidential veto completely derailing local government reform plans, and with them the swathe of reforms which depend on it.
The converse scenario, that of acceding to the President's position, would be akin to complete government capitulation to both the President and the SLD, in effect a public declaration that it is not an AWS-Freedom Union coalition which governs Poland, but a coalition between the SLD and President Kwasniewski. Some observers feel that the first option would be fatally damaging to the government's credibility, perhaps even provoking a resignation by Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek. The latter option, implying survival but total humiliation, may also not be stomached by other coalition ministers.
The next two weeks promise to be as tense as any in the last eight months of government, decisive for the future and credibility of Prime Minister Buzek. It may well be that Kwasniewski's move is a mere gambit, designed to extract further concessions. Even if that is so, Kwasniewski will still end up the winner, confirming the view of some that in September 1997 the post-communists did not lose power, but perhaps were merely forced to exercise it by other means.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw Director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl
Last week's vote in Parliament was over a crucial government bill to amend the number of voivodships from the current 49 to 12. This reform is part of a grander reform to totally revamp the structure of local government, as well as to change the balance of functions in the hands of central and local government in favor of the latter.
Although the reform had not figured highly in the election campaign last year of Solidarity Election Action (AWS), the government chose to make it the first flagship reform of its administration. Why? Because most of the other key reforms, such as that of the health service or educational system, are themselves dependent on a revamp of the functions of central government in the first place. To make such reforms work, local government reform had to be the bedrock.
At first sight it did not seem that the government would have much difficulty in passing the changes. The coalition has a respectable majority, and after all in the previous Parliament even the former government had talked about the need for local government reforms. Yet as the legislative process continued, it became clear that passing the reform would be no easy task.
On the one hand, resistance mounted among the governing coalition's parliamentarians, particularly within AWS. Some MPs genuinely felt that the need to oppose the disappearance of their province and respond to constituency pressures, while more radical parliamentarians saw the establishment of German Lander-style regions as part of a pernicious plot to break up Poland for absorption into the European Union.
On the side of the opposition, the SLD decided to switch from supporting local government reform to challenging its very principles, and when it became clear that the reform would happen anyway - sought to water it down. Yet the government still felt confident enough that it could muster enough votes to go ahead with a reform option with 12 voivodships.
To test the water for support of the "12" option, at the beginning of the voting process last week in Parliament, a technical amendment was put down by a coalition parliamentarian that revealed a hemorrhaging of support on a huge scale. It was clear the government would lose the final vote, and in a first act of capitulation the government agreed to support 15, rather than 12 voivodships in the Senate. This was an attempt to get the bill through Parliament at all.
The immediate result was the wielding of knives in the coalition ranks as the guilty men who had led the rebellion - coalition MPs Adam Slomka and Jan lopuszanski - were thrown out of the AWS parliamentary club. More MPs left in support, depleting the AWS (and therefore government ranks) by eight parliamentarians. The main fear now for AWS is that the renegade MPs will make good their threat to link up with the Peasants Party (PSL) in Parliament, and perhaps put together a rival right-wing coalition to AWS at the next election, running on a radical national-Catholic platform.
More threatening however than all the coalition bloodshed was a tactical masterstroke pulled off by President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who until the vote had been in lukewarm support of the government option.
Once it became clear the government was wounded, he moved in for the kill by declaring that he would veto any reform bill that fell short of proposing 17 voivodships, precisely the number that the SLD has been arguing for all along. That means that over the next couple of weeks the government will have to decide whether to stick to its new "15" option, at the risk of having a presidential veto completely derailing local government reform plans, and with them the swathe of reforms which depend on it.
The converse scenario, that of acceding to the President's position, would be akin to complete government capitulation to both the President and the SLD, in effect a public declaration that it is not an AWS-Freedom Union coalition which governs Poland, but a coalition between the SLD and President Kwasniewski. Some observers feel that the first option would be fatally damaging to the government's credibility, perhaps even provoking a resignation by Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek. The latter option, implying survival but total humiliation, may also not be stomached by other coalition ministers.
The next two weeks promise to be as tense as any in the last eight months of government, decisive for the future and credibility of Prime Minister Buzek. It may well be that Kwasniewski's move is a mere gambit, designed to extract further concessions. Even if that is so, Kwasniewski will still end up the winner, confirming the view of some that in September 1997 the post-communists did not lose power, but perhaps were merely forced to exercise it by other means.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw Director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl
