The right stuffed
The SLD is bullish about the local elections on Oct. 27. The new electoral system favours big parties, and opinion polls suggest Lepper is leaking votes to SLD as a result of Kołodko's extravagant promises. The fragile centre-right coalition linking the Civic Platform and Law and Justice parties is totally unconvincing because the two leaders, Andrzej Olechowski and Lech Kaczyński, are fighting each other to be mayor of Warsaw.
Despite the likelihood that the SLD will lose many mayoral races in large cities, this election will demonstrate that the SLD remains the dominant party in national politics. It will also tell us many interesting things about whether the PSL is holding its vote (odds against) and whether Lepper is still on the rise (evens). It will also gauge the relative strength of the fundamentalist nationalists, the so-called Taliban - the League of Polish Families (LPR) - who are stridently opposing EU membership.
There are fascinating races outside Warsaw. Watch the 14-horse race in Szczecin where the runners include Colonel Ryszard Chwastek, the army whistleblower who is standing on an LPR ticket - while in favour of the EU.
However, it is the struggle on the centre-right between Olechowski and Kaczyński in Warsaw that will determine the shape of opposition politics in the presidential elections in 2005.
Those who want to see the right have any credible chance of seriously contesting the next Sejm elections should be rooting for a Kaczyński victory in Warsaw, though not because he is the better candidate. In the cold light of day an Olechowski victory would preserve all the splits which plague the centre-right. Olechowski leading the Polish centre-right is as likely as pigs acquiring wings. His candidacy for president would never be accepted by Kaczyński's followers or by many other strands of opinion on the right. His past (as informer for the Polish intelligence services in communist days) will forever make him unpalatable, and Kaczyński's people rightly believe that even should Olechowski win Warsaw, he could not overcome Kaczyński in the provinces.
Kaczyński, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable to many Civic Platform activists. Olechowski has promised that if he loses the race in Warsaw he will withdraw from seeking elected office. That promise, should it be realised, will leave his followers rudderless, and many of them will choose, however reluctantly, to side with Kaczyński.
Once Kaczyński neutralises the Civic Platform, he will get a chance to get more right-wingers on board. The messianic zeal of the catholic Taliban will fade if it loses the referendum offering, some believe, further easy pickings for a Kaczyński-dominated centre-right. Even a wobbling PSL electorate would be far more accessible for Kaczyński than for Olechowski.
Only a reasonably big tent encompassing social conservatives and economic liberals has a chance of convincingly challenging the SLD in the next general election. The AWS coalition collapsed because of trade union friction and the totally indecisive and chaotic style of leadership offered by Marian Krzaklewski. Kaczyński certainly is not indecisive. His only weaknesses are that like many on the Polish right, he is rather illiberal on economics and finds compromise difficult to stomach.
That for the first time Poles will directly elect their local mayors and this may encourage voter turnout - however, a word of caution. Remember that the Sejm forgot to grant the new city bosses any additional powers, leaving most decision-making powers with elected councillors, an insurance policy that the SLD took out on its supporters. This is a recipe for internal conflicts and rivalries since in many cases the new mayor will lack a majority to rule the council, tempting the government to impose commissioner rule on "ungovernable" authorities. Since that commissioner will always be from the SLD, the government and the party at large can sleep easily come election night.
