Don't rock the boat
For many months now, the accepted wisdom has been that Poland is heading for early election in the first couple of months next year. Ever since the Freedom Union (UW) party left the government in the early summer, it seemed that the days of Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek's government were numbered: as a minority administration, it had no support for its legislative proposals in Parliament and could not be expected to pass the 2001 budget. The assumption that there would be early elections was bolstered by signals to that effect from the UW and particularly its leader Leszek Balcerowicz, who has long been an advocate of a spring electoral cycle to remove budgetary drafting from the vicissitudes of electoral politics. Yet it is now precisely from within the UW itself that influential voices are increasingly questioning the wisdom of sending the country to the polls before the end of the full parliamentary term next autumn.
The signals are certainly there. In the last couple of weeks, both the head of UW's parliamentary faction, Jerzy Wierchowicz, and the party's secretary general, Miroslaw Czech, have made public statements suggesting that the party may well support the government's budget when it is submitted to Parliament next month. Under the constitution, Parliament has four months in which to accept the budget. Failure to do so gives the president the option of dissolving Parliament and calling an election. Since Buzek can only count on the votes of his ruling minority Solidarity Election Action (AWS) movement, he needs the votes of the UW. So the musings of Messrs Wierchowicz and Czech are good news for the government.
Why is the UW starting to shift its ground? In their media statements, the UW politicians spoke nobly of the need for "political responsibility," of not using the budget as a political football, and of the need to maintain the tempo of Poland's European Union membership negotiations, which would be disrupted in the event of early elections. But of course, the real reasons are both more prosaic and more complex.
At one level, the UW's newfound desire to extend the life of the government comes down to political self-interest. Successive opinion polls show the party firmly stuck at below 10% of the national vote. Many party members believe that the UW is paying the price for its invisibility over the last few months, when it withdrew from the government and failed to field a candidate in the presidential elections. Not only that, but the party is now facing two separate political challenges. To begin with, the landslide victory of Aleksander Kwasniewski in the presidential elections has spilled over into still more solid support for the opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) party, which according to current opinion polls is heading for an absolute majority in the next Parliament. As a typical third party, the UW's power rests largely in its ability to enter government as a junior coalition partner. Yet SLD leader Leszek Miller has made it clear that he has little enthusiasm for a coalition with the UW, leaving that party to face the prospect of at least four years in the political wilderness.
But there is also a second challenge to the UW from the electoral results of presidential candidate Andrzej Olechowski, who although not supported by the UW ran on a very similar program and polled 17% of the vote, twice the UW's opinion poll rating. Views are divided as to what Olechowski's next step will be. If he decides to form his own party and compete in the forthcoming election for the UW's center ground, the latter is in serious trouble. Yet even if Olechowski does not create his own party and many suspect he will not his presence on the political scene is causing an important rethink in UW ranks over their political strategy. Either way, the UW needs to regroup and early elections now seem too risky.
On a deeper level, the UW's increasing hesitancy about provoking early elections stems less from self-interest than genuine concern about the constitutional balance in the event of a landslide SLD victory. The prospect of a totally dominant Prime Minister Miller supported by Kwasniewski and controlling every level of the Polish state raises real anxieties within the UW. The first half of 2001, however, affords some opportunities to establish institutional barriers to future SLD power in that Parliament will be electing new members of the Constitutional Tribunal and the National Radio and Television Council (KRRiTV), as well as the chairman of the powerful Supreme Board of Inspection (NIK) watchdog body. Both AWS and UW realize that failure to exploit these opportunities by early elections will remove the last checks against untrammeled SLD power.
Yet it may turn out that UW's enthusiasm for letting Parliament run its full term may not be sufficient to ensure that the budget passes. In light of the current infighting within AWS, it may be that the ruling party will split and collapse at the final hurdle, and that the UW will no longer have a partner with whom to negotiate a budgeting deal.
Until last month, it seems that there were two certainties in Polish politics: early elections, and a next SLD government. The latter is still true, but the former wait and see.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at: director@cec.com.pl
