Dancing with the devil

The Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) has decided to put aside its distaste for the antics of Andrzej Lepper's Self-Defense party. When there is a good political deal to be done, the partner doesn't matter. The deal in question is the adoption of a less proportional system of allocating seats in local government and parliamentary elections. The SLD was very annoyed last year when, just before the election, all the other parties in Parliament ganged up and introduced a meticulously proportional system of counting votes into seats. This happened because the other parties were running scared that any system that favored larger parties would leave the SLD with an overall majority. The election result in 2001 was a resounding SLD win, but because of the ultra-proportional system of counting votes, it did not translate into an overall majority. As a result, the SLD was reluctantly forced into a coalition with the Peasants Party (PSL). When it came to having its preferred system for translating votes into seats in the local elections, the SLD was at first defeated in the Sejm. But a majority in the Senate came to the party's rescue in amending the bill. Lepper's Self-Defense changed its mind - hoping that its popularity would translate into more seats under a system favoring larger parties - and the SLD got its way when the Sejm failed to overturn the Senate's amendments. Only a short time ago, the opposition parties were congratulating themselves on having stopped the system through a ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal. This august body ruled that the Senate may not return to matters already decided by the Sejm and introduce a new bill disguised as an amendment.

The opposition's joy has now been turned into fury. The SLD struck a deal with Lepper and voted through a change in the system for the local government elections, which it also extended to parliamentary elections. In doing this, the SLD has cunningly used Lepper's confidence that his party would still be a major player in three years' time. The price SLD paid to get its way was extremely low. Together with Lepper's party, it voted for a provision that would enable parties whose election expenditure reports were not approved by the Electoral Commission to still receive a large proportion of state funding. This was important for Lepper as his party's financial returns from the parliamentary elections were rejected by the Electoral Commission. This bit of horse-trading is a graphic example of the contempt that so many Polish politicians have for the law. Never let the rule of law get in the way of a good political wheeze.

The change of the system for allocating seats is good news for the SLD. Now that the legislation is passed, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who favors an election system that rewards the big parties at the expense of the small ones, will approve it. He believes that this encourages consolidation rather than fragmentation of the political system. This means that even if Lepper changes his mind and decides to vote through the old ultra-proportional system with the rest of the opposition just before an election, the SLD can be sure that the president will veto that bill. A presidential veto would, of course, be effective since the opposition parties do not have the necessary 60% majority to overturn it. This episode shows that the SLD is still the sharpest political mover on the scene. Its flexibility is truly impressive. It has proved capable of swallowing its pride over Lepper's attacks on its ministers when there was a good political trade-off to be carried out. Do not expect any onslaught to destroy Lepper. He is too often a useful ally who can be used to undermine the existing coalition partner, the PSL. In the election, he will be a very useful foe, against whom the SLD can pretend to be a centrist modern European force. If there is one cloud in this silver lining for the SLD, it goes something like this: What if some other party or coalition of parties gets its act together and on the basis of winning a minority of the votes obtains a majority of seats? Unlikely? Remember the old Polish saying that "he who digs holes for others ends up in them himself." This bit of wisdom could be very painful for Poland should this election system assist Lepper in his drive for power.

Chris Mularczyk is a Warsaw-based consultant. He can be e-mailed at cmularczyk@wbj.pl.