The bitter end
Doomsayers have predicted the end of the ruling Solidarity Election Action (AWS) coalition movement many times. But the events of last week make it look as if this time it really is the end of the road for the political force that swept to power four years ago, with so many hopes attached to it.
Not only electorally, with the polls showing AWS permanently stuck below 10% of the national vote, but also as a political entity. Before AWS' establishment in 1996, the Right was heavily fragmented, now it seems those days are back.
The fact that AWS is disintegrating so quickly is partly because it was never a proper party in the first place. Despite its identity as the only serious political force on the right, internally it remained a coalition of disparate and often battling parties separately registered in Polish courts. Each party had its members, structures, bosses and spheres of influence, and all were loath to give up their fiefs as the price of establishing a single, centralized party. Although AWS underwent a quasi-reform last Christmas, it remained officially a coalition of four political parties and one Solidarity trade union.
Although there had been public symptoms of internal AWS squabbling prior to last year's presidential elections, the defeat in September of the AWS candidate then-leader Marian Krzaklewski was the signal that commenced all-out internal warfare.
The first focal point of attack was Krzaklewski himself, and much of late 2000 was taken up by warring AWS factions seeking his removal. Overlaying the crisis of AWS leadership was the challenge by the new Civic Platform (PO) movement, partly made up of former AWS politicians such as the current Parliament's speaker, Maciej Plazynski. Its success in the opinion polls then pulled other politicians out of AWS, including almost the entire Conservative People's Party (SKL), one of AWS' constituent parties.
The final nail in the AWS coffin has been the return of former Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Janusz Tomaszewski, following his acquittal on charges of having lied in his vetting statement about past contacts with the communist secret police. Tomaszewski has his loyal supporters, but also many bitter enemies, and the current swathe of arguing inside AWS relates to the extent to which Tomaszewski can be permitted to return to his former influence within the party. The bottom line is that if at the May congress of the AWS Social Movement (RS AWS) Tomaszewski regains control over the party, other AWS politicians will leave the movement, leaving RS AWS to its own devices.
The prospect of a further fragmentation of AWS is made more likely by the fact that dissatisfied AWS politicians, who have come to the conclusion that the AWS name and logo are a permanent liability, do have alternatives before them. Already, PO has shown how the prospect of electoral success is a magnet for those AWS dissidents on the liberal center of the movement.
It now seems that AWS has another batch of senior, more right-wing politicians, prepared to jump ship and create an alternative right-wing political movement with current Justice Minister Lech Kaczynski at its head. Kaczynski is probably the only popular right-wing politician in Poland today as a result of his anti-crime policies, which have resulted in attempts to toughen up the criminal code and kick start the lumbering judicial system into action against organized crime. The idea is to bring under Kaczynski's umbrella the party run by his brother, Jaroslaw, together with the Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland (ROP) under former Prime Minister Jan Olszewski, and the new Right Alliance (PP) controlled by current Culture Minister Kazimierz Ujazdowski. All share a deep suspicion of Tomaszewski, as well as a committed cultural conservatism on the lines of Western conservative parties.
If this group of politicians does quit AWS, it will leave behind essentially a Tomaszewski-controlled RS AWS, perhaps forming a single party with the Christian Democrats, in an alliance with the Catholic Christian National Union (ZChN) party. The upshot will be that AWS will have permanently split perhaps even abandoning the name itself and the Polish Right will go to the elections with two bitterly competing lists of candidates. The danger is that under the current electoral law which may still be in place in October if President Aleksander Kwasniewski, as expected, vetoes the new electoral law that has recently been drawn up neither list might make it into Parliament. That would mean that the Polish Right may again find itself in the role of an extraparliamentary opposition, much as in the 1993-1997 period.
The experience of opposition then was enough to bring the Right together in 1997 for what has now clearly been its last hurrah. It is truly doubtful if the public will once again entrust government to them, even if by some miracle they were to reunite once again for the 2005 elections. What is more likely is that the role of opposition to the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) will be taken up by PO, which according to current trends will have up to 100 seats in the next Parliament. Next time SLD loses power, it is more than likely that PO will be forming the subsequent government, with possibly some future right-wing party as its junior partner. But as for the traditional Right in Poland, the glory days are over, possibly forever.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl (mailto:director@cec.com.pl).
