Significant force prevails

The SLD has always denied that it has a parliamentary arrangement with Lepper's party. It explained away the fact that it voted Lepper in as Deputy Speaker by arguing that his party as a significant force in Parliament could not be ignored. It dismissed evidence such as Lepper's party deputies voting with it over issues like changes to the electoral law and limiting the vetting of candidates as circumstantial. It cannot help if occasionally Lepper votes with it.
The signing of the first regional coalition agreement between Lepper's party and the SLD took place in the Lublin region. The two parties will share executive power to the exclusion of SLD's national government coalition partner, the PSL. Other such agreements are likely to follow.
The man who actually signed the deal for the SLD in Lublin is none other than Grzegorz Kurczuk, the Justice Minister. He feels no problem about signing a deal to share power with a party which has openly flouted the law he is entrusted to uphold. His and the SLD's antics have raised the ire of President Kwaœniewski who lost no time in taking advantage of Miller's discomfort and publicly voiced his displeasure.
The SLD argues that this coalition is only a local one. Local government is a place where mundane matters are settled and there is no room for "grand politics". The SLD says it is prepared to govern with the "pro-European" right, should the right wish to do so. Miller can sleep easily on that one. The Polish centre- right may have suicidal tendencies, but it is not totally mad and will not sip from that poisoned chalice.

The reason behind SLD playing footsie with Samoobrona is not merely a question of arithmetic in the council chambers up and down the land, although one must acknowledge that this is a primary motive for power-hungry local SLD cadres. The other important reason is that the SLD's programme is in reality pretty close to that of Lepper's. Activists of both parties feed on the same kind of prejudices:
" Wealth is suspicious. Particularly other people's wealth (I don't remember any questioning of where the wealth of the SLD's and Lepper's deputies has come from). Let us then do our best, therefore, to discover what they are through the register of assets being implemented by Minister Kołodko.
" The state should control the commanding heights of the economy. Privatisation is just a sale of public assets at knockdown prices which should be avoided.
" The transformation process started by Leszek Balcerowicz has hit the poor and undermined the national economy.
" Public expenditure should rise and interest rates should fall. These are the best antidotes to poverty and lack of economic development.
" The communist past was not all bad. In the 1970s, life was better for most people than it is now.

The only issue they don't really agree on is the question of Poland's accession to the EU. Here Lepper remains tied to his rural electorate which distrusts everything to do with the EU. However, that issue will soon be settled one way or the other, and they will both hope to tuck into nourishing EU fare at the regional level.
The SLD is back to a strategy of trying to "ride the tiger". It thinks that doing deals with Lepper's party will help in the long-term to embroil it in the knotty business of making executive decisions. This is to either civilise the beast or to discredit him. One way or the other, the SLD thinks that it can only benefit. It will be left with either a potential alternative partner to the PSL at the national level or an electorate with nowhere to go but back to the SLD.

These kinds of intricate plans have a nasty habit of going badly wrong. Sharing power with Lepper only helps to further legitimise him and his antics. He may learn from the SLD's own political tactics in the early 1990s. The SLD was then a party which contested the reform process it knew to be inevitable, and which on the quiet its people were involved in. It was at once both in power and in opposition to it.
This strategy worked very well and saw the SLD in power come 1993. Lepper will probably decide to take a share in the spoils of power while at the same time taking advantage of growing discontent, always blaming his coalition partner for anything that goes wrong. He has already begun this process by distancing himself from the local deal in Lublin.
The trouble with riding the tiger is that one is liable to return from the ride inside the tiger's tummy. The last time the left seized absolute power and used it to the total detriment of this country, was in none other than Lublin in 1944. Let us hope history is not about to repeat itself.