Poland Elections

Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki on Sunday blamed Lech Walesa for his painful defeat in Poland's presidential elections but called on his supporters to vote for the Solidarity leader in a runoff next Sunday. He also asked his campaign officials to organize a new party called Democratic Union to contest the elections. Mazowiecki finished behind Walesa and outsider Stanislaw Tyminski in last week's vote.

Poles voted Sunday to return the country's former Communists to power in hopes they will stop the economic slide threatening the nation's previously bright financial future. According to exit polls, the Democratic Left Alliance was on track to win more than 44% of the vote, or more than three times the total of its closest competitor. That would give the party a majority of seats in the 460-member lower house of Parliament and mean that it could govern without forming a coalition.

The scene is being set in Poland for an election showdown between Solidarity union leader Lech Walesa and Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as the split in the former Communist opposition movement settles into two broad camps. Neither Walesa nor Mazowiecki has reached the stage of declaring himself a candidate for the presidency, a post now held by Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the former Communist Party leader whose term has five more years to run.

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski won a second term with 55% of the vote, according to partial returns, avoiding a runoff in Poland's third presidential election since shedding communism a decade ago. Kwasniewski, a former Communist, defeated 11 challengers, including legendary Solidarity founder Lech Walesa and a number of fringe candidates from the far right. Walesa, whom Kwasniewski ousted from the presidency in a close election in 1995, won just 0.9% of the vote.

If there's one thing that angers Canadian supporters of Polish presidential candidate Stanislaw Tyminski, it's when people call their pick "the man from nowhere." "The question is, is he coming from nowhere?" argues Robert Spanski, a Polish-Canadian businessman who is flying to Warsaw this week to help with the Tyminski campaign. "He's coming from Canada. He's financially independent. He's a citizen of Peru. He's a man with a proven record."

Aleksander Kwasniewski wants to be the next president of Poland, and like many candidates here, he has looked westward for his electoral bag of tricks. Kwasniewski travels for days at a time on a big blue campaign bus. He convenes folksy town meetings in faraway places. And for enlightenment, he peruses 1992 videotapes of Bill Clinton working crowds--even studying the way the U.S. presidential hopeful clutched the microphone.

In the wake of a crushing third-place finish in Poland's presidential elections, Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and his government resigned Monday as many of his supporters bemoaned a lack of sophistication among the country's voters and argued that Mazowiecki's defeat represented a dangerous moment for the country's fledgling democracy.

Just weeks after U.S. elections in which apathy seemed the big winner, Poles eagerly flocked to voting booths Saturday in several American cities to cast absentee ballots in the first free Polish presidential election since World War II. Many of the voters seemed so proud to participate that they took turns snapping photographs of each other as they dropped their paper voting slips into ballot boxes.

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski won a second term with 55% of the vote, according to partial returns, avoiding a runoff in Poland's third presidential election since shedding communism a decade ago. Kwasniewski, a former Communist, defeated 11 challengers, including legendary Solidarity founder Lech Walesa and a number of fringe candidates from the far right. Walesa, whom Kwasniewski ousted from the presidency in a close election in 1995, won just 0.9% of the vote.

A Polish court ruled Thursday that President Aleksander Kwasniewski did not work for the Communist-era secret police, freeing him to run for reelection in October. The court issued its verdict a day after hearing testimony from former officers of the secret police who disputed suggestions in old police files that Kwasniewski, an ex-Communist, worked as an agent code-named Alek in the early 1980s. "I am very pleased.

A special court cleared former Polish President Lech Walesa on Friday of accusations that he collaborated with Communist-era secret police after it heard evidence that fabricated documents were used in an early 1980s effort to discredit him. The allegations that the Nobel Prize winner had been an informer in his early days as a dissident shipyard worker were first made public in 1992.

A Polish court ruled Thursday that President Aleksander Kwasniewski did not work for the Communist-era secret police, freeing him to run for reelection in October. The court issued its verdict a day after hearing testimony from former officers of the secret police who disputed suggestions in old police files that Kwasniewski, an ex-Communist, worked as an agent code-named Alek in the early 1980s. "I am very pleased.

Lech Walesa, the Nobel Prize-winning former union leader who helped topple communism in Poland and then served as this nation's president, plunged back into politics Sunday by accepting his party's nomination for another presidential run. The blunt-spoken, charismatic but often abrasive Walesa is running against incumbent President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former Communist, on the slogan "Black is black. White is white."

Ex-Communist Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz announced the Polish Cabinet's impending resignation as official results underlined the center-right Solidarity Election Action party's triumph in elections. Cimoszewicz said the resignations would mean that the new Cabinet could take over right after the new Parliament first sits Oct. 20. In the 460-member lower house, Solidarity took 201 seats and Cimoszewicz's Democratic Left Alliance was in second place with 164.

A rejuvenated Solidarity movement appeared to have pulled off a stunning political upset Sunday, finishing well ahead of the ruling former Communists and their allies in parliamentary elections, according to Polish television projections. Swept from power in a humiliating defeat four years ago, Solidarity forces were faring better than most pollsters had predicted.

Poles will vote Sunday in parliamentary elections for the fourth time since the Communist stranglehold was broken in 1989. But despite the dramatic changes of the past eight years, the campaign is being dominated by a familiar struggle between left-wing insiders and right-wing outsiders.

Polish President Lech Walesa, whose political standing had plunged so low that he once contemplated not seeking reelection, apparently forged ahead in a crowded field of candidates Sunday to qualify for a runoff vote against the popular leader of Poland's reformed Communists.

At a meeting with journalists not long ago, Aleksander Kwasniewski was asked by an American what role President Lech Walesa should play in Poland if Walesa lost Sunday's election. Relaxed and smiling, legs crossed casually beneath the table, Kwasniewski answered confidently in English. "The role of ex-presidents in the United States is very impressive; I would like to study such examples," he said.

Polish voters turned out in small numbers Sunday to ratify a contentious new constitution, which unofficial exit polls indicated was headed for victory despite strong opposition from the Solidarity trade union and its allies. The respected PBS polling agency reported late Sunday that 57% of voters favored the 243-article document, which was drafted by a parliamentary commission to replace the country's Communist-era constitution and a host of ad hoc amendments.

Polish voters will decide Sunday whether to ratify the country's new constitution, which lawmakers drafted to replace the anachronistic, Communist-era version enacted in 1952. The vote is being watched for more than its legal significance. The referendum, coming just four months before parliamentary elections, is considered a dry run for the fall campaign, which will pit a rejuvenated Solidarity trade-union movement against the ruling former Communists.