Onward Christian democrats

Solidarnoœć as a trades union is not enjoying good press. It gets criticised for contesting labour market reforms. It is ridiculed for its declining membership. It is blamed for the failure of the previous AWS-dominated government. All very well carping. But at least they tried. They tried to create a united centre-right. They refused to go down the populist eurosceptic road. Their activists have often swallowed hard and helped in the restructuring of ailing firms, despite that being tough on its members. Solidarnoœć, for all its faults and for the failings of its previous leader Marian Krzaklewski, has behaved as a responsible part of public debate in this country. It would be comforting to be able to claim that the same is true of the business sector. Well, it is not. Both Polish and foreign capital has been conspicuous in its absence in trying to shape the political scene. This does not mean that business has stayed away from politics. Far from it. Business has lobbied hard for individual sectoral interests. It has been good at buying influence in all parties. Depending on temporary convenience, the business community has given money to all and sundry to get short-term gains. For a while it worked. Politicians acted as lobbyists for hire, and business was able to duck-and-dive between various parties all saying more or less the same thing. The rise of Lepper and the ultra-Catholics means that this game is coming to an end. Business better start thinking more strategically and less tactically. Many businessmen of today complain about corruption amongst the politicians. They do so because the cost of “getting things done” has risen over the years. Ten years ago that cost was small; now it is seen as a genuine expense. As President Kwaœniewski once quipped, there is one simple way for businessmen to stop corruption: all they need to do is stop paying the bribes. The dangers for business arising from the current political situation are very real. It is facing the possibility that the accession referendum will go belly-up. This would precipitate early elections. Early elections will produce a populist government of either Lepper with the SLD or the ultra-Catholics together with the PSL and the Kaczyński brothers. Both are rightly regarded as nightmare scenarios. What Poland and its business sector really need, and probably rather quickly, is a type of Christian Democratic party which is not called by that name. Poles hate attempts to mix politics with religion and will not vote for something with a religious title in it. However, in terms of their views, most Poles are actually leaning towards Christian Democracy. They support a mix of social conservatism, compassionate welfare-statism and economic freedom advocated by European Christian Democrats - for example, those who make up the majority of the European Peoples’ Party in the European Parliament. The formation of that kind of party could help in time to provide business with the stability it needs. The referendum campaign and the European elections in 2004 give those politicians in the wilderness the chance to regroup and build something along the lines of a Christian Democratic party. For it to be built, it will need an impulse from two of its potential strategic partners - business and the trades unions. Business must not sit on the sidelines and wait for incompetent and quarrelsome politicians to work something out. It must get its hands dirty and put both brains and money to work. No-one will convince me that there are no people out there who could help in putting together such a force. However, none of this will work, unless business and Solidarnoœć get together and give the new being a chance by protecting the political infant from the party-hoppers (those who have been and failed in scores of parties) and from the need to raise money from shady business dealings in order to survive. The odds are that none of this will happen. That’s why the odds on Lepper and the ultra-Catholics winning the accession referendum are shortening by the day. The prospect of having to deal increasingly with the likes of Lepper should concentrate the minds of both business and union leaders alike. The time for prevarication and taking shortcuts is fast running out, folks.