The stakes go up
Polish politics have always been fragile, but the internal developments this week revealed once again how narrow the boundary between political stability and chaos really is. It remains unclear how much more life the current government has in it, but if a couple of weeks ago it was like a patient on the critical list, it now resembles one where doctors are about to make a decision whether or not to unplug the life support system.
On the surface, bodily functions remain operative just. Last week the government submitted its draft budget for 2001. Initially, under the Polish Constitution, this budget had been due for submission at the end of September, but the government announced a six-week delay citing "extraordinary circumstances." Those circumstances essentially involved the Finance Ministry not being able to make the figures add up, but at last at the last possible moment the budget arrived in Parliament for review by MPs. There are now four months, until mid-March, for Parliament to pass the budget, failing which President Aleksander Kwasniewski will have the right to dissolve Parliament and call new elections.
For the government, the key question is the need to obtain the support of the Freedom Union (UW) party, which until the summer had been the junior coalition partner of the ruling Solidarity Election Action (AWS) movement. Over the last couple of months, opinions as to whether the UW would support the budget have swung like a seesaw. Originally, in the heat of the UW's split from the government, UW leader Leszek Balcerowicz made it clear he was not interested in maintaining the life of the government for a minute longer than necessary, and that he would be arguing for a rejection of the budget. Yet over the last few weeks, Balcerowicz's position as UW leader has eroded considerably, and it is now almost universally expected that Balcerowicz will not stand for re-election at the UW's December congress, leaving the way open for former Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek to take over. Over the last couple of months, Geremek and his allies have been signaling that they may swing the UW round to support the budget after all. The reasons? Elections now do not suit Geremek, who needs time to cement his position in the party, which itself seems unable to fight above the 10% opinion poll barrier. Equally significantly, Geremek is much less rigorous economically than Balcerowicz, and unlike the latter, would be unlikely to want to commit electoral suicide over a couple of tenths of a percent of the projected budgetary deficit.
Yet the matter remains complex. Immediate comments from within the UW following the government's submission of the budget show up divisions in the party as to whether or not to plunge in the knife. On the one hand, leading economic experts such as Jerzy Osiatynski, a former finance minister, were quick in pouring scorn on the Finance Ministry's proposals. But other leading UW members, such as Waldemar Kuczynski who bizarrely remains the chief economic adviser to Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, despite the UW's departure from government defended Finance Minister Jaroslaw Bauc, on the basis that the budget draft, given the economic realities, was almost identical to what Balcerowicz would have submitted if he were finance minister.
Buzek's case, however, has not been helped by the goings-on around the annulment of the privatization of Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen by Treasury Minister Andrzej Chronowski. Whatever the merits or demerits of the decision, it was enough to confirm in the eyes of many UW members that the government had essentially fallen apart. No other conclusion could be drawn from the fact that within 24 hours of Chronowski's dramatic decision, Buzek denied all knowledge of it, while Janusz Steinhoff simultaneously economy minister, deputy prime minister, and head of the Cabinet's economic committee condemned the move publicly. The increasing sense of chaos and incompetence at the upper levels of the government led many even normally favorable UW politicians to question the wisdom of keeping the government in office.
The sense that, from the UW's perspective, AWS is no longer a credible partner, came when it was revealed that the UW had been seeking support for the candidacy of Balcerowicz as next head of the National Bank of Poland from within the ranks of the opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). Were the SLD to support Balcerowicz's candidacy, moreover in the face of AWS opposition, that would be a sure sign that the UW had abandoned AWS and was perhaps preparing for a more permanent political alliance with the SLD after the next elections. But interestingly enough, these overtures were quickly rebuffed by SLD leader Leszek Miller, who made it clear that support for Balcerowicz within SLD ranks was minimal. Not for the first time, this was a signal that the SLD if it can will want to have nothing to do with the UW after the elections, and if at all, then only on its own terms.
The current poker game in Polish politics has at least a couple of months to play out, but already the players are dealing the cards. How they fall remains to be seen.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be
e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl
