Rebuilding the government
What a difference a week makes. Just last week, the spirits of most Solidarity Election Action (AWS) members were at their lowest ebb ever, as the prospect of a minority government loomed and with it the possibility of early elections at which they remained convinced Poland's main center-right party would face annihilation. Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, too, seemed a broken man, without the spirit to fight on as head of a minority government. Yet now, only a few days later, the atmosphere inside AWS has changed completely. AWS MPs are relishing the opportunity to enjoy power untrammeled by the busybody interference of the Freedom Union (UW), and Buzek seems to have finally understood that being prime minister means making sovereign decisions. What's happened?
One of the interesting aspects of Polish politics is how practical experience brings out a clearer understanding of the constitution, and demonstrates its strengths and weaknesses. Until last week's crisis, few people had realized that a minority government and its prime minister are constitutionally more secure than a majority government. That is because under the constitution, a government can involuntarily fall only under two circumstances: when it fails to pass a budget by Jan. 31 of a given year; and if a prime minister is removed by a constructive vote of no-confidence of at least 231 MPs. The latter means that any vote of no-confidence must be accompanied by the name of the new prime minister, and can only be effected by a ruling majority coalition. Right now, 231 votes and a new consensus PM cannot be mustered by AWS alone, nor by any other political constellation. So Buzek is essentially immovable until at least early next year.
That paradox also means that Buzek is freed from the need to listen to anybody, including AWS leader Marian Krzaklewski, since the possibility of him being removed by anyone is zero. Already last week Buzek showed signs of independence for the first time when he moved rapidly to fill three vacant cabinet seats justice, transport and finance with new ministers. Usually this process would have involved drawn-out negotiations with the leaders of the various AWS and UW factions; now, the decision was made with hardly any discussion by Buzek himself. Most expect next week's news of the defense minister to replace Janusz Onyszkiewicz, who will not formally resign until Monday, to be equally efficient.
Indeed, many AWS MPs who were initially sceptical of the prospect of a minority government being a going concern are prepared to give Buzek the benefit of the doubt. Although AWS will be handicapped in Parliament in terms of pushing through legislation, there is much that can be done by the new ministers to try to improve AWS's poll ratings. One priority will be a law and order crackdown resisted by the more liberal UW members; the fact that the new justice minister is Lech Kaczynski, a noted traditionalist on law and order issues, bodes well. The new finance minister, Jaroslaw Bauc, will be helped in his plan to carry forward Leszek Balcerowicz's tough budgetary policies by Buzek's shifting of Jerzy Kropiwnicki, Balcerowicz's main nemesis, into the backwaters of a new ministry of regional development.
The atmosphere inside the AWS parliamentary club is that of rallying round Buzek and making a serious effort to support the government. It will be interesting to observe the opinion poll ratings of AWS and UW over the coming few weeks. The latter party has made a huge gamble in severing the coalition, a decision pushed through by the party board against the wishes of both Balcerowicz and Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek. The idea was to distance the UW from an impotent government and weak prime minister, and to increase support for itself by reasserting its centrist and reformist identity. Yet by leaving, the UW has created the constitutional conditions for an even more entrenched administration, and has turned the prime minister into a man who has nothing to lose. If AWS does make a final heroic effort to assert its policies through a series of simple but popular measures, such as being tough on crime, the UW could find itself attacking an increasingly popular government and appearing to be irresponsible.
What some UW politicians now fear is that it is they, and not AWS, who may start to sink in the polls. They are also aware that the breach of trust that AWS feels the UW has displayed will make it difficult to reconstruct the coalition in the future. That, added to the fact the opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) seems to have lost all interest in a future coalition with the UW, may mean that the UW is heading for the political wilderness for a very long time indeed. It may be that the future will show that the UW's decision, far from being a tactical masterstroke, was the last one it ever made in any government at all.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl
