Presidential business
In the past she served as a Minister of Industry and Trade in the government of Prime Minister J.K. Bielecki and was involved in the restructuring and privatization of more then 7000 state-owned enterprises.
A founder of one of the first consulting companies in Poland, Nicom Consulting, she was also president of the Polish Business Roundtable from 1996 to 1999, after which she established Lewiatan. She is vice-president of the trilateral commission for social and economic affairs.
Eliza Durka: The President in Poland has very little influence on the economic situation. Why have you decided to run for office?
Henryka Bochniarz: The President has the legislative initiative, and can also veto bills or send them to the Constitutional Tribunal. It is not little.
Our current President has not used his legislative powers yet.
He did. For example, the referendum bill has been passed after being initiated by the President. I do not agree with Lech Kaczyński that the powers of the President should be increased in Poland. I fully agree with the current division of power.
However, the President of our country, in which the rules of political life are still being created, should be a stabilizing factor. President Kwaśniewski has not used his position to initiate a social debate - a debate outside the political frame.
You are pulling out from business life, and you will no longer preside over the organization that you created. Will you have anything to come back to if your presidential plans do not work out?
I wouldn't have run if the management board of the confederation hadn't decided that I should take part in the elections. The elections are also an opportunity to present issues important from both the employers' as well the employees' point of view to the general public. We are very successful in our environment, but our arguments and program rarely reach society. We can already see that in the campaign a dividing line is being created between entrepreneurs and the rest of the world. There is no way that a retired person will be better off, that a teacher will be better off, if the employer won't be better off. It is in the interest of the unemployed when the entrepreneur hires more people.
But you are not associated with entrepreneurs running small businesses but rather with the big business from the front pages.
It is not true. I myself run a small company. It is the small and medium size enterprises that determine the state of the private sector not a few large companies.
Big business can fight on its own. It is represented in the Polish Business Roundtable (PRB). Six years ago I stopped heading PRB because I decided that I should concentrate on fighting for the most important thing in the Polish economy - the best interest of SMEs.
Most Poles live on the edge of poverty. One-fifth of them are unemployed. How do you plan to convince them to vote for you?
Poland's biggest problem is unemployment. We need more jobs in Poland. Since I am an entrepreneur I know what solutions should be proposed, how to build a social agreement on this issue and how to approach it.
I want to appeal to those excluded, explain to them that if you have a toothache you should go to a dentist not an orthopedist. Do not support those who point to different problems in the country. Your problem is that you simply do not have a job.
The President must concentrate on the country's most grave problem. The post of the President should be a place of debate. With our political life there is no such place and no such debate. The effect can be a legislative initiative or agreeing on key matters with the government, or even a agreement above party lines.
Who will vote for you?
I am counting on votes of reason - the votes of people with initiative and the votes of entrepreneurs, young people and women, and all those who prefer to think about the future rather than the past. I am counting on those who appreciate competency and pragmatism, not hatred and suspicion. I think this is quite a large group of voters.
How many votes do you count on in the first round?
Minimum 20 percent. There is no point to run if you don't expect to go through to the second round.
A campaign is not only the program. It is mainly creating an image. How far are you ready to go, as far as changing the image is concerned, to win?
If up to date I have been successful in realizing my plans, it is only because I was true to myself. If I let political marketing experts transform me I will lose my credibility.
It might turn out that in Poland there is no demand for the image for which I have worked in the last 16 years. But I prefer to be rejected rather than pretend I am somebody else.
Interview by Eliza Durka
A founder of one of the first consulting companies in Poland, Nicom Consulting, she was also president of the Polish Business Roundtable from 1996 to 1999, after which she established Lewiatan. She is vice-president of the trilateral commission for social and economic affairs.
Eliza Durka: The President in Poland has very little influence on the economic situation. Why have you decided to run for office?
Henryka Bochniarz: The President has the legislative initiative, and can also veto bills or send them to the Constitutional Tribunal. It is not little.
Our current President has not used his legislative powers yet.
He did. For example, the referendum bill has been passed after being initiated by the President. I do not agree with Lech Kaczyński that the powers of the President should be increased in Poland. I fully agree with the current division of power.
However, the President of our country, in which the rules of political life are still being created, should be a stabilizing factor. President Kwaśniewski has not used his position to initiate a social debate - a debate outside the political frame.
You are pulling out from business life, and you will no longer preside over the organization that you created. Will you have anything to come back to if your presidential plans do not work out?
I wouldn't have run if the management board of the confederation hadn't decided that I should take part in the elections. The elections are also an opportunity to present issues important from both the employers' as well the employees' point of view to the general public. We are very successful in our environment, but our arguments and program rarely reach society. We can already see that in the campaign a dividing line is being created between entrepreneurs and the rest of the world. There is no way that a retired person will be better off, that a teacher will be better off, if the employer won't be better off. It is in the interest of the unemployed when the entrepreneur hires more people.
But you are not associated with entrepreneurs running small businesses but rather with the big business from the front pages.
It is not true. I myself run a small company. It is the small and medium size enterprises that determine the state of the private sector not a few large companies.
Big business can fight on its own. It is represented in the Polish Business Roundtable (PRB). Six years ago I stopped heading PRB because I decided that I should concentrate on fighting for the most important thing in the Polish economy - the best interest of SMEs.
Most Poles live on the edge of poverty. One-fifth of them are unemployed. How do you plan to convince them to vote for you?
Poland's biggest problem is unemployment. We need more jobs in Poland. Since I am an entrepreneur I know what solutions should be proposed, how to build a social agreement on this issue and how to approach it.
I want to appeal to those excluded, explain to them that if you have a toothache you should go to a dentist not an orthopedist. Do not support those who point to different problems in the country. Your problem is that you simply do not have a job.
The President must concentrate on the country's most grave problem. The post of the President should be a place of debate. With our political life there is no such place and no such debate. The effect can be a legislative initiative or agreeing on key matters with the government, or even a agreement above party lines.
Who will vote for you?
I am counting on votes of reason - the votes of people with initiative and the votes of entrepreneurs, young people and women, and all those who prefer to think about the future rather than the past. I am counting on those who appreciate competency and pragmatism, not hatred and suspicion. I think this is quite a large group of voters.
How many votes do you count on in the first round?
Minimum 20 percent. There is no point to run if you don't expect to go through to the second round.
A campaign is not only the program. It is mainly creating an image. How far are you ready to go, as far as changing the image is concerned, to win?
If up to date I have been successful in realizing my plans, it is only because I was true to myself. If I let political marketing experts transform me I will lose my credibility.
It might turn out that in Poland there is no demand for the image for which I have worked in the last 16 years. But I prefer to be rejected rather than pretend I am somebody else.
Interview by Eliza Durka
