The real May poll
The PSL leaving the coalition is as likely as Miller becoming a monk. Whatever the issue, it'll huff and puff and stitch up some compromise to stay in. If it had any pride, it would leave the SLD. The PSL is actually behaving like a woman who knows her husband is cheating on her, but does not have the courage to leave for fear of what she might lose in terms of her creature comforts.
It has witnessed Lepper's party voting with the SLD on the electoral law and over the virtual scrapping of the vetting law. It must also have noted how Lepper's disruption of the last session of the Sejm got the SLD's speaker out of a tight spot of having to face a no-confidence vote. Thanks to Lepper's antics, the SLD was able to suspend proceedings and wait for a better day. Any leverage the PSL might have had in the situation disappeared when the men in the red and white ties turned up.
Despite all these humiliations, the PSL simply has too much to lose in terms of jobs and resources. Accession to the EU provides them with an excuse to get more people into jobs in the rural administrative sector. It means the PSL can control the administrative process of applying for rural development funds and for direct payments. That in effect gives it a great deal of clout in poor rural communities. It will not forego that voluntarily.
Now Lepper and his merry men are threatening that they will disrupt proceedings to force an early election. It will be interesting to see if the SLD will try to stop them. Or will it analyse the election results from this Sunday's round and decide that it, too, wants to cash in at the polls while the going is still reasonably good on a platform of "it's us or chaos"?
If anyone is going to break the current coalition, it is the SLD. There simply is no point for the SLD to let the current Parliament run its full course. Once the accession negotiations are finished and the referendum is won, the only logical action for the SLD to take is to go for early elections to cash its chips before the voters realise how much pain there is going to have to be as a result of accession.
Economists estimate that Poland's budget in 2004 would have to grow by 8-10% to accommodate all accession commitments. In order to find the money, the Minister of Finance would either have to make painful cuts in entitlements and the political patronage-ridden public agencies and funds, or raise taxes. Either course of action will make the government and the SLD as popular as the bubonic plague. Add to this the potential shock of real competition hitting the Polish agricultural and SME sectors in 2004-2005, and any path to election victory looks to be blocked by immovable obstacles.
This is why the sensible thing to do is to cut and run as soon as you can after the accession referendum, if not before. The charge of undue haste is easily offset by the following three benefits:
" You catch the opposition on the hop, unready for an election. The Polish moderate right is still in a state of disarray. If Lepper and Radio Maryja are the only energetic opposition around, moderate voters may reluctantly fear something worse.
" You give President Kwaniewski no time to organise any slate of candidates he might be planning for 2005. If the election is fought and won soon, Kwaniewski really does become a lame-duck president who is no longer a threat to the Miller empire.
" You fight the election on the basis of the current electoral law. It helps big parties and gives the biggest party the chance of getting a parliamentary majority. If you wait until 2005, all the other parliamentary parties may decide to change the system so that it really is proportional.
Getting to the polls reasonably soon is clearly in the SLD's interest. This is why Lepper's antics may be used to get this Parliament dissolved in the near future so that the elections could be combined with the EU referendum. It also makes very likely a scenario in which the SLD ensures that the 2004 budget does not pass through the Sejm (in which case the president has little choice but to grant dissolution), leading to the date of the general election being synchronised with Poland's accession to the EU.
