Enfranchisement veto stands
The universal enfranchisement bill that has been a centerpiece of domestic politics since last summer drew its final breath last week.
During two days of heated debates that took on the air of a public settling of accounts over the errors of communism, backers of the enfranchisement initiative failed to win over enough deputies to secure the three-fifths parliamentary majority required to overturn President Aleksander Kwasniewski's September veto.
While the outcome came as no surprise to even the most diehard supporters, proponents of the move to hand state-owned apartments and farmland over to their current users at no charge still mourned the result.
"The majority upheld the bill, but the three-fifths required to overturn the veto was not obtained," said Tomasz Wojcik, a Solidarity Election Action (AWS) deputy from Wroclaw who was one of the driving forces behind the bill. "This is a tragic day for Poles."
Pro-enfranchisement supporters fell 41 votes short of overturning the veto, with the final vote tallying 212 in favor of enfranchisement and 207 against.
While Wojcik mourned the bill's demise, Jan Wyrowinski, a Freedom Union (UW) deputy from Torun who opposed the enfranchisement bill, said it was time to move on. "I'm relieved that this is the end of the work on a bad proposal," he said.
The universal enfranchisement bill was created to compensate citizens for the wrongs of the communist era. It included mechanisms whereby average citizens could acquire, free of charge, state assets such as the apartments or land on which their houses are situated. Since the bill's surprise passage by the Sejm in July, enfranchisement has been catapulted to the forefront of domestic politics and the recent presidential campaign. AWS presidential hopeful Marian Krzaklewski, who placed third in the balloting two weeks ago, in particular appeared to pin his political aspirations on the issue, or at least hoped it would win him a place in possible run-off elections. Those elections did not take place, as Kwasniewski won his re-election bid outright with 54% of the vote.
With the battle over enfranchisement complete, parliamentarians are looking forward to pushing through legislation that had been on hold until the bill's fate became clear.
According to Wyrowinski, the demise of enfranchisement means that two key bills on state and company-owned flats and housing cooperatives will come up for a vote in Parliament next month. Both of these bills have been on hold pending the outcome of the enfranchisement act.
Dismemberment of the enfranchisement bill will also spawn new legislative projects, Wyrowinski said. Next month, his UW party plans to introduce legislation that will direct 7% of privatization revenue into an education fund that will offer scholarships and support education initiatives. Under the enfranchisement act, 7% of the shares of all privatized companies were to be invested in the National Enfranchisement Fund, a financial institution that was to manage enfranchisement assets earmarked for Poles not eligible to receive in-kind compensation.
While many see the enfranchisement chapter of Polish legislation as having come to a close, some say the fight is not over. Wojcik said he will start working to introduce enfranchisement legislation and pro-enfranchisement initiatives in related legislation as it makes its way through the Sejm.
Beyond the halls of Parliament, the closure of the enfranchisement debate means that local governments will now be able to set their long-term development plans for the management and sale of city-owned property. Many cities called a halt to real-estate marketing plans due to the unclear outcome over the enfranchisement initiative.
After enfranchisement passed in July, the city of Wroclaw, for example, postponed a municipal bond drive tied to the sale of property owned by the city. The drive, organized in cooperation with Bank Zachodni, aimed to raise zl. 25 million ($5.6 million) through the sale of apartments currently owned and managed by the city. Under the plan, residents of city-owned flats would have a chance to buy their apartments at a 65% discount if they paid the amount owed in bonds. The Sejm's approval of the enfranchisement bill in July would have made the bond drive in its present form either pointless or a complete flop.
"I postponed the (bond) issue in part to give everyone an equal chance," said Andrzej Jaroch, deputy mayor of Wroclaw in charge of municipal real estate. Jaroch said that as early as this week he will move to jump-start the stalled plans and that the bond drive could get underway as early as December.
Enfranchisement was an especially salient issue for cities such as Wroclaw and Szczecin that were once part of Germany, where a large proportion of real estate is controlled by local authorities. Over the past decade alone, Wroclaw authorities have sold off one-quarter or 20,000 of its city-owned apartments. While maintenance costs eat a zl. 48 million ($19.2 million) hole in the city budget every year, the property has also been a source of investment capital used to carry out much-needed infrastructure investments. In an earlier bond issue also tied to the sale of some 3,000 communal flats, Wroclaw earmarked the zl. 50 million ($11.1 million) raised for road improvements.
