Will he, won't he?
Until now, amid the chaos of day-to-day politics, President Aleksander Kwasniewski appears as an oasis of calm within the storm around him.
Much of Kwasniewski's public popularity has been built around the perception that he is a safe pair of hands, and although the constitution doesn't give him many real powers, his image as a predictable and stable politician has largely been responsible for his continued popularity.
At the same time, Kwasniewski has sought to project himself as a protector of constitutional stability and many expected him to spend his second term discretely distancing himself from the main opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), which he once led, in favor of becoming an "above-party" politician.
Last week, however, brought a debate that may yet challenge Kwasniewski's claim to the image that he is trying to build for himself. In one of the less visible political developments of recent months to outside observers, Poland passed a long-awaited electoral law, bringing the country's election system into line with the local government reform of 1999.
In a surprise radio announcement, Kwasniewski floated the prospect of a presidential veto to the law. Time will tell whether he does indeed follow through on his threat, but the prospect of such a move raises the prospect of yet more chaos in Polish politics during the next few months. It also means that Kwasniewski could become embroiled in direct party politics for the first time in many years.
Poland has not been fortunate in having a stable electoral law. Since the downfall of communism in 1989, practically every parliamentary election has happened under a different electoral system. In all of them, in accordance with the constitution, the method has been proportional representation. But there have been various changes to do with the system of counting votes, shape of constituencies and thresholds for getting into Parliament as well as different rules about who can and cannot stand for Parliament.
Many have seen a pattern emerging of parliaments drafting new electoral rules that will prevail in the subsequent election, with an eye to rules that will favor the ruling parliamentary majority at any specific time.
This is the accusation that Kwasniewski has made against the new electoral law. The new law which has taken over three years to emerge from Parliament makes changes in three or four main areas. Firstly it changes the boundaries of constituencies to take account of Poland's new administrative structure. It also introduces new rules on party financing, to make anonymous political donations more difficult to obtain.
The old national list system, which allowed party machines to insert into Parliament key political figures who had failed the electoral test in constituencies, has also been abolished. But the crucial change is in the introduction of a vote-counting method that improves the seats gained by parties scoring a moderate vote. This is at the expense of "flattening out" the seats obtained by parties that gain large numbers of votes, effectively making it more difficult to secure an absolute majority by a winning party.
That is bad news for the main opposition SLD, whose leader, Leszek Miller, had been hoping to make political history this autumn by becoming the first prime minister in democratic Polish political history to rule with a single party majority. Although Kwasniewski has not argued the SLD case in suggesting a veto, he has talked about the iniquities of meddling with an electoral system to suit current lawmakers. This particularly applies to the ruling Solidarity Election Action (AWS) whose parlous electoral standing means that it would lose most under the old electoral system and gain more seats under the revised plan.
Another argument that some have mooted as a motive for Kwasniewski is that the revised electoral system makes it more likely that SLD will have to form a governing coalition with the loathed Polish Peasant Party (PSL) whose economic policies would give any government nightmares, and whose presence in government would make Poland's delicate negotiations with the European Union even more strained.
Yet the implications of a veto are also severe. It is not clear whether AWS and its allies would be able to overturn the veto in Parliament, and the lack of a new electoral law would mean that technically the next elections would be fought in administrative territories that no longer exist.
Moreover, a group of parliamentarians has recently lodged a claim with the Constitutional Tribunal that the current electoral law is unconstitutional. Were the court to agree with the motion, it would raise the prospect of Poland having no electoral law at all.
It is unclear whether Kwasniewski would risk the potential destabilization that such a veto could potentially create, and that is probably the reason for his hesitation in deciding publicly about what to do. Either choice presents him with unpleasant consequences, potentially challenging his image as a stabilizing not destabilizing force in politics. On the other hand, Poland without politicians? Doesn't sound like a bad idea at all.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl (mailto:director@cec.com.pl)
