Party time
By : Juliet D. Golden
Time for a change: Tensions run high at the final vote.
Despite driving rain and temperatures hovering around freezing, one-third of registered voters in the southern town of Nysa hit the polls 10 days ago to participate in this year's first mock parliamentary elections in the countdown to the real ballot slated for early autumn.
In what turned out to be the first peek and some argue a reliable one at how voters will react in the elections later this year, the ex-communists from the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) emerged victorious, amassing more than 46% of the vote. Nysa also turned out to be a strong debut for the recently formed centrist political grouping under the tripartite leadership of Andrzej Olechowski, Donald Tusk and Maciej Plazynski. Their Civic Platform (PO) party came in second with a strong 17% of the ballot.
But Nysa spelled disaster for the governing Solidarity Election Action (AWS) and its former coalition partner, the Freedom Union (UW). Despite cameo appearances by Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek on Nysa's market square, which was broadcast on national TV, his rightist AWS party garnered only 7% of the vote, compared to the 34% it earned in the last parliamentary elections three and a half years ago.
But 7% would give AWS at least some parliamentary representation. For UW, the Nysa vote may prove to be the party's demise. Despite a showy and costly campaign and the backing of celebrities like TV chef Maciej Kuron, the party failed to win even 3% of the vote, far short of the 5% needed to win a seat in Parliament, under the election law.
"We are in danger of disappearing from the political scene," said Grazyna Staniszewska, a UW deputy from Bielsko-Biala, the day prior to the vote.
The UW wasn't alone in placing emphasis on Nysa. Political stakes were high for all parties in a mock election now treated as Poland's version of the U.S. New Hampshire primaries.
All major parties engineered full-blown campaigns in the days and weeks prior to the actual ballot. PO, for example, pulled in 250 volunteers, largely students from all over Poland to knock on doors, hand out leaflets and woo voters to the new party. On the Saturday before the vote, in a carnival-like atmosphere, Poland's political elite converged on the town square to shake hands with passersby, sign autographs, hold babies and bathe in the journalistic spotlight.
But the Nysa elections didn't just provide an informal launch of this year's campaign. Nor did it alone give a first glimpse at the shape of the next Parliament. The mock election and the concomitant show also highlighted the key issues facing the country and its citizens five months before the next general elections.
"Right now, this is the center of Poland," Staniszewska said.
As ground zero, Nysa provided a window into where the country is 11 years after the fall of communism and the nature of politics outside the battlegrounds of the nation's capital.
"Nysa shows problems that mid-sized towns are facing all around the country," said Boguslaw Wierdak, a local businessman and recent PO convert.
Nysa might also prove to be a road map of where the country is going. In a town where every fourth working-age citizen is without a job, unemployment goes beyond being a political slogan to a major issue.
But for Nysa, the problem will probably get worse before it gets better. Daewoo-owned Nysa Motors is on the verge of collapse along with the other big local employer Zaklady Urzadzen Przemyslowych Nysa, an industrial equipment manufacturer. Also with Poland's armed forces being reorganized, from June military garrisons here will shut down leaving another 500 people jobless.
"It could be a situation that Nysa is ahead of the rest of Poland," said Marcin Palade, head of Osrodek Badan Wyborczych (OBW), the polling agency that organized the Nysa ballot.
A crystal ball
Leszek Miller's SLD took home the first prize at the Nysa elections with 46% of the vote.
But in focusing on Nysa, politicians come to the town primarily to seal their own political fates rather than end social ills that plague this and other towns in Poland's heartland.
"Politicians' promises are empty words cast to the wind," said one woman out doing her shopping on the day before election Sunday.
For politicians and their strategists, success in Nysa is seen as crucial in the months leading up to the nationwide elections. Deemed by politicians and media as "Poland in a nutshell," the town or more precisely the preliminary elections is treated as the chief weather vane that predicts future electoral behavior.
"Poland is looking at Nysa right now to determine which party has a chance," UW's Staniszewska said. "Nobody wants to back a loser."
Nysa earned the reputation as the reliable diviner of political fortunes following the first preliminary elections held in the town last fall in the countdown to President Aleksander Kwasniewski's electoral victory. But it wasn't Nysa's accuracy in foretelling Kwasniewski's second term that earned the town its fame. This was won after results showed that the AWS candidate Marian Krzaklewski would probably do better at the election than most opinion surveys had been predicting.
In Nysa, Krzaklewski earned 18% of the vote, slightly higher than the 16% he received in the nationwide elections a few weeks later. In Nysa, and nationally, Kwasniewski won 54% of the vote. Olechowski got 19% of the vote in Nysa, compared to 17% in the actual ballot.
Opinion polls predicted that in the election Krzaklewski would earn almost half the number of votes gained in Nysa.
Theories abound about why Nysa results are so accurate. Palade said that the town's post-war history is the key to understanding the Nysa phenomenon. Before World War II, Nysa was part of Germany. When handed over to Poland after 1945, the town was resettled by immigrants from all over the country, transforming it into a melting pot of Polish society.
"Nysa gives a pretty good measure of social moods," Palade said.
If Nysa is such a reliable measure, apart from SLD, PO and AWS, two other parties will also make it into the Sejm: Samoobrona, led by renegade leader Andrzej Lepper, which raked in 6.6% of the vote and the National Pensioners Party (KPER), Poland's senior-citizen lobby, which earned 6.3% of the vote.
On the out
We're down but not out: Hecklers muffle AWS supporters on stage.
The real battle in Nysa was not over how large a backing SLD would earn. The major question mark before the ballot was over the future of the current political leaders from AWS and its forlorn partners from UW.
If Nysa is a good judge, the next elections will mark the final fall of the current ruling class from the AWS and UW parties. While AWS leaders may be breathing a sigh of relief that they avoided complete demise, the support won is a mere shadow of the 34% backing earned in parliamentary elections in 1997.
Also, during pre-election rallies in Nysa, the party was booed from the stage by angry voters. Instead of presenting a party program, the chairman of the Committee for Scientific Research (KBN), Andrzej Wiszniewski, spun a tale in which he predicted an AWS comeback similar to the surprise victory of Poland's own world ski-jump champion, Adam Malysz.
In the case of UW, the Nysa defeat may well spell the end of the party on Poland's political scene.
Despite the party's campaign, whose cost is estimated zl. 100,000, which cost came to shove, voters in Nysa clearly rejected UW, now almost exclusively associated with the country's anti-communist opposition movement. While leaders like Bronislaw Geremek, Jacek Kuron, Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Wladyslaw Frasyniuk may earn respect for past achievements and travails, voters turned down their offer to lead the country into the 21st century.
"People are no longer interested that Frasyniuk sat in prison for six years under communism or that he was treated poorly," Wierdak said. "That's his problem. When they vote for someone, they now expect that person to be competent and have enough experience to manage the economy."
Observers and politicians said the UW's demise mostly had to do with its association with the unpopular policies and what are perceived as failed reforms of the current government. Until last year, UW governed in coalition with AWS.
Where UW lost support, political newcomer PO gained backers in Nysa, a far from predictable outcome before the final vote. While the party's lead candidate Olechowski raked in 17% of the votes in the last presidential elections, recent polls have shown that the support for PO was petering out.
"Party leaders were afraid that we would get only 10-14% of the vote," Wierdak said.
While Nysa was a crucial test for PO, judging from the results it passed with flying colors. Not only did voters show their approval of the Olechowski-Tusk-Plazynski trio, the party's organizers proved that they could mount a successful campaign. Wierdak, who was in charge of PO's Nysa effort, said the party spent about zl. 20,000 on Nysa. Much of the door-to-door campaigning and organizing was done by a small army of 250 volunteer students who converged on the town from across Poland.
"This result solidified our position on the political market," Wierdak said. "This shows that we can maintain support even in a town that has a 25% unemployment rate."
And the winner is
Nysa may be the real winner of the preliminary elections, especially if these latest elections prove accurate next fall.
By putting itself in the spotlight, Nysa has started to stick out among the masses of mid-sized towns in Poland. Since launching the preliminary elections last year, the town has benefited from political favors bestowed on it by politicians looking to win votes from its residents.
The local Nysa hospital received zl. 2 million ($500,000) from the national coffers after Prime Minister Buzek campaigned in the town on behalf of Krzaklewski last fall. This year the Education Ministry shipped out new computers for Internet workshops in Nysa's schools.
In addition, Nysa was recently selected as the site of a nationally funded professional college part of which will be located in the town's soon-to-be-abandoned military garrisons.
Listen to the people: Nysa Mayor Janusz Sanocki
"We don't go to Warsaw, Warsaw comes to us," said Janusz Sanocki, mayor of Nysa. "We have been successful at turning contacts with politicians into concrete benefits for the town."
But whether Nysa continues to benefit from the attention will likely depend on how accurate a measure its voters continue to be of election outcomes.
While OBW and officials maintain that the most recent election results are a good indication of how the major parties will perform next fall, as far as the smaller parties are concerned Nysa's mock elections may be far from accurate.
Most notably, according to Nysa's results, the Peasants Party (PSL), which has double-digit backing in public opinion polls, would not have breached the 5% mark, the prerequisite to make it into the Sejm. However, other than cameo appearances in the market square, PSL party officials did little else to win votes in Nysa. Judging from last year's presidential campaign of party leader Jaroslaw Kalinowski who won 6% in the popular vote, PSL can be expected to push hard to win votes later this year.
Maverick unite: Andrzej Lepper, leader of Samoobrona party.
According to OBW's Palade, in the actual elections this fall, PSL could earn up to 10% of the vote and the other farmers party, Samoobrona, would most likely earn only around 5% of the vote.
While Palade predicts that SLD won't likely increase its support beyond 46%, PO on the other hand might manage to grab large numbers of younger voters from AWS and SLD, giving the party a chance of winning 25% of the vote this fall.
Developments this spring and summer on the right-hand side of Poland's political spectrum could also skew the Nysa election results.
With five months to go before the real elections, the right-wing parties may have enough time to regroup after AWS' poor performance in Nysa. The most likely change on the right that could impact Nysa's most recent predictions is the new political coalition between AWS, the Right Alliance (PP), the Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland (ROP) and the popular Kaczynski twins. Justice Minister Lech Kaczynski repeatedly ranks high in public opinion polls. However, it is still unclear how much that popular backing will translate into actual votes next fall.
"The political situation in September could be very interesting," Palade said.
A final unknown is the future of the new election law. While a law was passed this year by the Sejm and the Senate, all signs are that Kwasniewski will veto the bill by the end of this month. The new law is considered to benefit small parties at the expense of large political groups such as SLD. If the president has second thoughts and signs the bill into law, his SLD party might not enjoy the large majority Nysa's mock elections suggest.
"The new election law would play in favor of PO and the right-wing parties," Palade said.
