Streetwise
by Aleksander Nowacki
From Via Appia to Fleet Street and on to Wall Street - some streets leave an indelible mark on the history of many countries and on the popular consciousness. Ordynacka, a small street off Warsaw's Nowy Świat, has now joined their ranks, though just how large a place it will come to occupy in this country's politics is not yet certain.
It is on Ordynacka that the pro-regime Polish Students Association (ZSP), founded as a finishing school for future Communist party apparatchiks, had its headquarters in the dark days of the 70's and 80's. When ZSP's former members decided to set up an association three years ago, they chose the name of the street as their eponym. Catapulted to notoriety, if not fame, due to some of its members' alleged involvement in Rywingate, the association has since become a viable political force in the country.
There is an iron-clad logic to this development. Until March of this year, Ordynacka was a little known network of friends who had been active in support of the then universally-reviled Communist government. The association counts among its members president Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who holds the honorary No. 1 membership card, some of his closest aides, a former Left Democratic Alliance (SLD) Prime Minister, Józef Oleksy, and a number of other prominent SLD politicians. But it was only when another member, Włodzimierz Czarzasty, came to be widely suspected of being one of "the group holding power" that Ordynacka became a household name. An unwelcome development, threatening to stain the good name of a U.S.-style alumni association? On the contrary, now that Ordynacka has been mentioned in the context of a corruption scandal, it is natural that the nation will have come to realize its power. A logical next step for those who have to date wielded behind-the-scenes influence is to step into the limelight.
That is why calls to replace Prime Minister Leszek Miller with Ordynacka member Józef Oleksy have recently come from people claiming to represent the association. When President Kwaśniewski appeared to back the idea of an independent list in elections to the European Parliament, some Ordynacka members seemed to take it as a call for them to seize the initiative and build a challenge to SLD. These plans seem, however, to have come to nothing as the president is said to be courting SLD to secure the party's support for his wife in next year's presidential elections.
This comes as yet another disappointment to those who were once thought future Communist party leaders. With a few exceptions they failed to come of age by the time the regime collapsed and so the role for which they had been groomed eluded them. The urbane, university-educated Ordynacka members will have to accept a former Party leader from the industrial town of Żyrardów as Prime Minister for a little longer yet. But their time will come. All they need is a couple more corruption scandals starring Ordynacka members as likely culprits.
