The unbearable lightness of being
Less than four months from now, Poland will have completed its first round of presidential elections, and if the polls are anything to go by, it looks clear that current President Aleksander Kwasniewski will be heading for victory and a second five-year term. Not only that: his second term may well be won by a landslide, with victory in the first round, which requires 50% of the vote. Indeed, so confident is his campaign team that it is for this second goal that they are aiming, rather than victory alone.
There are still politicians on the right such as Marian Krzaklewski who seem to believe that Kwasniewski can be beaten. Indeed, there is a paradoxical situation in that the more certain Kwasniewski's re-election seems, the more candidates put themselves up for the contest. Hardly a week passes without this or that obscure right-wing politician or has-been throwing his name into the ring. Some are clearly motivated merely by the guarantee that they will achieve their 15 minutes of fame before retreating into obscurity, but in many cases their efforts reflect a lack of real understanding of what the sources of Kwasniewski's support are.
On the surface, it is difficult to understand how Kwasniewski has achieved the dominant position he has in Polish politics. Only 10 years ago, he was a little-respected communist apparatchik who made the mistake of commencing his climb of the communist career ladder only a few years before communism collapsed. He managed to become the editor of a communist youth weekly, and the pinnacle of his success was being minister of sports in one of the final communist governments in the late 1980s. Most communist activists of his profile vanished into deserved obscurity, but Kwasniewski succeeded in becoming president of Poland, an achievement only slightly less curious than a former electrician becoming president before him. How did he do it?
Many Polish right-wing politicians continue to insist on the effects of a left-wing conspiracy in the press or media, but the truth is that a large part of the reason is Kwasniewski himself. In a country where political careers are launched and torpedoed by political cronyism, and where prime ministers are elevated to their positions by party cabals rather than ordinary voters, Kwasniewski has succeeded where it matters most: winning elections. Indeed, Poland's presidential election is the only one where people can vote directly for a specific candidate and see that reflected in the result. It takes talent to win real elections, and Kwasniewski has that, in two main ways. Firstly, there is the easy charm and sharp mind that allows him to win debates easily by appearing to genuinely agree with his interlocutor when only moments before he had been arguing against him. He has also mastered the art of the soundbite, and is a typical Western-style politician in his use of an attractive wife as joint campaign partner. Secondly, he has understood that electioneering is a fine art to be carried on throughout a term of office, and not just switched on for a four-month campaign. And he has learned to surround himself with professionals, rather than amateurs and yes-men.
More than that, Kwasniewski seems to have understood what truly drives the psyche of the ordinary Polish voter. Right-wing politicians remain convinced that voters want to hear nothing other than ideological diatribes, often reflecting the symbols of anticommunist resistance. Yet as many sociologists have pointed out, the majority of Poles want to forget about the past, and be governed by politicians who will largely leave them to their own devices. Kwasniewski has recognized this fact. Alone among the candidates, he refuses to identify himself in terms of the past, or to try to thrust neo-communist rhetoric down people's throats. Instead, he runs on a platform of pure pragmatism, recognizing the reality of the past but also stating that what matters is the future. Many Poles would like to forget the past especially since for very many it was a past defined by personal compromise and quiet moral failures and live for today.
A president who provides such an alibi, who appears sophisticated and has a mastery of foreign languages, is difficult to beat, especially if he is running for an office that never really tests any politician to the extreme. Foreigners remain in awe of the president, but few realize that he remains an impotent figurehead with no real power over day-to-day politics. That has certainly been the case under the government of Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, but even if Leszek Miller, leader of the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) were to become the next prime minister, do not expect this to change: although the two are close allies, it will be Miller calling the shots, not Kwasniewski.
Poland, the presidency and Aleksander Kwasniewski remain peculiarly suited to each other. An office which carries no real weight, in the hands of a politician whose political nimbleness makes him almost impossible to attack, in a country whose voters want to shut their minds to any deep moral or political issues. Kundera should write a book about it.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl
