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Poland's Uncertain Future
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20275 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1992 |
1,924 Words |
| Author
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Jozef Ruszar
Jozef Ruszar is a former Solidarity activist who works for
Radio Free Europe. |
Poland's president, Lech Walesa, is pressing for the dismissal of Premier Jan Olszewski. For now, Walesa is not getting his way. Walesa wants to discharge Olszewski because of the latter's support for the recently resigned Defense Minister Jan Parys. There is deep crisis at the top of the Polish state concerning who controls the army, the police, and the ministry of foreign affairs, to which both the president and the ministers of the government claim a right. Lech Dymarski, an adviser to Olszewski, said that the ministers will not step down, because there is not sufficient reason to do so and because it would be a step toward anarchy. Dymarski also emphatically rejected the president's demand for broader powers, because, he said, the ministers do not have a legal right to grant them, as questions of competence lie within the Parliament's jurisdiction. Moreover, it is high time to pass the new constitution.
Dymarski was responding to a presidential address in which Walesa expressed support for the French presidential system, which gives the president greater authority than does Poland's present, amended communist-era constitution. Walesa's main points were that the premier should be responsible to the president and not Parliament, and that the president should have primary control over the army, police, and foreign policy. Lech Walesa, who enjoys the strongest political position in Polish politics (despite a steep decline in popularity shared by most Polish politicians), is struggling to strengthen his position within the Polish state.
BEGINNING WITH CHIMNEY SMOKE
Democracy in Poland, more than in any other country that has left communism behind, is paying dearly for its impure origins. Whatever one might say about the Poles' magnificent resistance to communism, it is a fact that this resistance never would have borne the fruits of democracy without the communists' cooperation during the final stages of the ancien regime's disintegration. In Poland, and later in Russia, the communist elites realized that attempts to uphold the system were futile. Thus, they decided it would be best to cooperate with the opposition, giving it some power at first, and full authority later.
The most clear-cut example of this process occurred in Poland. First, General Jaruzelski agreed to "round-table talks" with the opposition. During the talks, the two sides struck a bargain on parliamentary elections, whereby 65 percent of the seats in the existing chamber of the Parliament, the Sejm, were reserved for the communists and their allies. The
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