Who's in charge?

   This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, a point of celebration for countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Poland should be especially proud of the enormous strides it has made in the last decade. In this period of strong auto sales, new chic restaurants, increasingly prevalent malls and booked travel tours, it may be difficult to remember the dark days of empty shelves, long lines and strikes that this country endured in the 1980s.

   But whether Poland can continue its lightening speed of development is being threatened, though, by its squabbling, fractious and irresponsible politicians. The governing Solidarity Election Action (AWS) and Freedom Union (UW) coalition watched the future of its tax reform bill cloud last Tuesday, when the two parties failed to achieve the quorum in the Sejm necessary to block an objection to the bill posed by opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and Peasants Party (PSL) deputies. The Sejm was going to hold a vote again on Friday, and at the time of this writing it was unclear whether AWS and UW would manage to take their deputies by the ear and have them show up and vote for their own bill.

   Seeing as how AWS and UW combined have 261 seats in the 460 member Sejm, having enough deputies present for a quorum (230) should have been easy. But a lack of discipline among AWS and UW ranks, and generally a lack of leadership, meant that several party deputies failed to show up for the vote. The result was that the Sejm was short five votes to achieve a quorum.

   This is blatant political incompetence. If AWS and UW can't bend their own people into line, how do these parties expect to lead an entire nation of 38 million highly opinionated (and we mean this in a good way) individuals? The lack of the necessary discipline and direction have sent quakes through the government, causing Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz a week ago to again threaten to resign if the two parties could not hammer out a tax agreement. That happened and he retracted the threat, but the news caused equity markets to shudder and the zloty to nose dive.

   Pushing through the tax proposal is crucial to Poland's continued economic development, as high rates now stymie corporate investment, weigh down individuals' purchasing power and lead to general payment avoidance by both groups. That's why both parties, and much of the general populous, supported it. But now the government only has until the end of November to pass this bill and cajole President Aleksander Kwasniewski to sign it, as any changes to fiscal policy must be made at least a month before they are initiated, and Jan. 1, 2000, is approaching fast.