Trouble on the farm
Looking back over the four years of the previous Solidarity Election Action (AWS) government, the feature that most comes to mind were the interminable quarrels within the administration, at first between AWS and its junior coalition partner the Freedom Union (UW), and then within AWS itself. No sooner had the government decided within the cabinet over a certain issue, than one or other governing faction would raise its head, either in the media or in Parliament, questioning the decision and leading a revolt against it. The resulting loss of authority of the prime minister was one of the main sources of the erosion of support for the governing parties and, ultimately, their final downfall in September's elections.
When Leszek Miller became prime minister last month as head of the new Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and Polish Peasants Party (PSL) coalition government, even those opposed to his administration were relieved that at last such embarrassing spectacles were things of the past. Miller has a reputation for toughness, and the relative weakness of the PSL would ensure that the latter would remain supine. Not for long. Last week demonstrated, much earlier than many people expected, some of the problems that the SLD-PSL coalition may experience in the future. With rocky times ahead, it does not bode well for the government's long-term stability.
The first example was during Parliament's first debate over Finance Minister Marek Belka's tax reform. Few observers question the need for radical change given the parlous state of the nation's finances, although there remain important differences as how best to proceed. For example, the opposition Civic Platform (PO) criticized the proposed changes from a neo-liberal direction, pointing out that the government seemed to be focusing on tax increases and not spending cuts. But what no one expected was opposition from the PSL only 48 hours after the government had collectively agreed to support the proposals. PSL MP Dariusz Grabowski strode onto the parliamentary platform and gave the PSL party line: Belka's proposals were unacceptable in many areas and needed to be changed. Miller and Belka could only watch and visibly fume at the open rebellion within the government.
The result was that Grabowski's status as a PSL MP was short-lived: the next day he was removed from the parliamentary club by Jarosław Kalinowski, PSL boss and deputy prime minister. To be sure, Grabowski was semi-detached within the PSL anyway: He had merely run for Parliament from their electoral list, but himself was a renegade from the now-forgotten populist Confederation of Independent Poland (KPN) party. Grabowski's main goal had been to get into Parliament, and he did not seem overly concerned by the loss of PSL status. Yet the incident reveals the extent to which the PSL remains a time bomb under Miller. Kalinowski swore that Grabowski's statements were not authorized, but anyone who has heard Kalinowski speak before and during the elections recognizes that Grabowski's views are close to that of his former boss. Ultimately the PSL entered Parliament on an economically populist program and it was entirely predictable that tensions would quickly emerge once specific economic reform proposals were on the table.
This was not the only sign of cracks appearing in the governmental monolith. The other example was the debate over the proposed legislative changes to the so-called lustration law, which govern the mechanism for screening parliamentarians and government officials for links with the former communist intelligence services. President Aleksander Kwaśniewski has introduced into Parliament a bill reforming the law - or, as the opposition sees it, emasculating it to the point of complete impotency. In the previous Parliament the existing law was passed by a presidential veto having been overruled by the PSL. This time, in a preliminary vote, the new law was opposed by PSL MP Bogdan Pźk, and one of the party's leading parliamentarians Janusz Piechociński resigned his post in the party's leadership in protest of the proposed reform.
The political arithmetic is, however, relentless and it is clear that both the proposed tax reform and lustration bill amendments will be passed. But that does not mean that the PSL will not become a problem for the Miller government in the future. The real test will come if and when Poland's economic problems balloon into a full-blown economic crisis that will require truly radical measures. Few expect the PSL to meekly accept them, and not to be tempted to start to build a power base in opposition to reform rather than support of it. The events of the last week also illustrate the continued schizophrenic nature of the PSL, which at the local level often seeks to legitimize itself among Poland's Catholic and traditional peasantry through opposition to the post-communist SLD. That is one reason for their previous support of lustration and their ambivalent response to attempts to modify it.
The last few years have seen the PSL increasingly struggling for survival in a country undergoing relentless modernization and Westernization. It remains to be seen how Kalinowski will react if and when he starts to see the PSL's already dwindling electorate evaporating in response to the party's participation in a government pursuing painful economic policies, and overtly supporting measures that appear to expiate the country's communist past. Faced with a choice between political extinction and a desperate attempt to recover popularity through populism, do not be surprised if he chooses the latter.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl.
