Poland Politics

A former Communist Party official who helped negotiate the transfer of power to the Solidarity trade union has agreed to become Poland's next prime minister. But Jozef Oleksy, a onetime party boss and a minister in the country's last Communist government, may never get the job. Oleksy, 48, faces what many here consider to be an impossible task: making peace between his left-wing coalition government and President Lech Walesa, the only Solidarity-era figure still holding top office in Poland.

Polish lawmakers stripped outspoken anti-establishment politician Andrzej Lepper of parliamentary immunity Friday, opening the door to his prosecution on slander charges and a possible prison term of up to two years. The leader of Self-Defense, a farmers union and populist party that holds the third-largest number of seats in Parliament, Lepper is seen by some Poles as a hero who combats corruption and the sellout of Polish national interests. Others view him as a threat to democracy.

When classes started in September at Duracza High School in Warsaw, Elzbieta Domanska and Agnieszka Rostkowska, both 16, were among many of the 800 students at the school stunned over a new feature of the curriculum: religious instruction, one hour weekly, taught by a Roman Catholic priest. "No one expected to see this," said Agnieszka. "It seemed out of place here." "It is more normal to have religious instruction in a holy place," said Elzbieta.

Andrzej Lepper, the bad boy of Polish politics, is a man who enjoys attention and knows how to get it. In an attack on the Polish establishment, the leader of Self-Defense, a farmers union and populist party, alleged late last year that five prominent politicians were taking bribes. Lepper based the charges, phrased in the form of questions, on information he said came from a farm manager named Bogdan Gasinski.

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.

For nearly half a century, the remains of Ignace Jan Paderewski, renowned pianist, composer and beloved Polish statesman, have rested in a zinc casket at the base of the mast of the USS Maine memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. If all had gone according to plan, his remains would have been transferred to Poland for a state burial June 29, the 50th anniversary of his death. A celebratory concert in Warsaw with some of the biggest names in music was scheduled.

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.

For a moment it looked like a flashback from the 1980s, a dramatic televised scene of Poland's struggle to overthrow communism, featuring top players in the Solidarity reform movement. Solidarity strategist Bronislaw Geremek issued a stern warning about the sanctity of democracy. Solidarity journalist Tadeusz Mazowiecki lectured about civilian control of the military. And Solidarity activist Wladyslaw Frasyniuk accused the Polish president of authoritarian tendencies.

Poland's center-right ruling coalition fell apart Tuesday, with the market-oriented junior partner pulling out to leave the Solidarity bloc in charge of a weakened government without a parliamentary majority. The change could mean a slower pace for implementing tough economic measures aimed at preparing this nation to join the European Union. It might also mean that parliamentary elections expected in the fall of 2001 will be moved up, perhaps to as early as this fall.

If opinion polls and political pundits are right, the enfeebled Solidarity opposition--which got its start in this Baltic port 17 years ago--is staging a stunning political turnaround. There is even serious talk of a Solidarity-led coalition taking back the Polish Parliament in elections next fall.

The recent revelation that an alleged gang leader on the lam once received a pardon from former President Lech Walesa has triggered a wave of controversy in Poland about this common presidential prerogative. No one has accused Walesa of wrongdoing. But there have been allegations that one or more of his aides might have been bribed to prepare the paperwork for the 1993 pardon of Andrzej Zielinski.

After he won reelection in a first-round knockout, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and his popular wife, Jolanta Kwasniewska, appeared at a victory rally with jubilant supporters, some of whom shouted out hopes that she will be his successor five years from now. "The presidency in this country is democratic, not dynastic," Kwasniewski, 45, responded at the event earlier this month, while going on to thank his wife as "a great support in difficult moments."

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.

President Aleksander Kwasniewski, speaking to a crowd of supporters plus a few hecklers at a recent campaign rally in this city's Old Town Square, mixed his typically all-inclusive message with carefully nuanced jabs at his critics.

Marking the 20th anniversary of Solidarity's birth, many key figures from the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc gathered here Wednesday to celebrate their victory over communism and to ponder the future. "We changed the face of this world," Lech Walesa, the onetime Lenin Shipyard electrician who won a Nobel Prize and served as Poland's president, told a special Solidarity congress. "We carried freedom to many countries, and we got freedom ourselves.

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."

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.

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.

Poland's center-right ruling coalition fell apart Tuesday, with the market-oriented junior partner pulling out to leave the Solidarity bloc in charge of a weakened government without a parliamentary majority. The change could mean a slower pace for implementing tough economic measures aimed at preparing this nation to join the European Union. It might also mean that parliamentary elections expected in the fall of 2001 will be moved up, perhaps to as early as this fall.

The strongly market-oriented junior partner in Poland's ruling coalition voted Sunday to pull its ministers out of the center-right government of Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, threatening it with collapse. The decision by leaders of the Freedom Union could lead to early parliamentary elections, which the ex-Communist Democratic Left Alliance would be favored to win, according to public opinion polls showing it with more support than the two coalition partners combined.