Poland

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Wałęsa’s Presidency

Solidarity split up in 1990 as Wałęsa competed in the presidential election. Mazowiecki was eliminated in the first ballot, while Wałęsa won the run-off against Stanisław Tymiński. Wałęsa was, however, unclear about what he wanted to make of his office. This led to an ambiguous definition of presidential, prime ministerial, and parliamentary powers in the 1992 “Little Constitution”. Post-Communist Poland thus suffered from a confused, unstable, and conflict-ridden political process. Proportional representation adopted for the 1991 election produced a Sejm composed of 29 political parties. Subsequent governments were generally ineffectual.

Poland established or renewed diplomatic relations with the European Community (now EU), the republics of the former Soviet Union, the Vatican, and Israel. Cooperation treaties were signed with the newly reunified Germany, as well as with many other neighbouring states. Poland joined the Council of Europe, and negotiated associate membership of the EU, with full membership expected by 2002 (that deadline was subsequently postponed). Poland also entered NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme, as a prelude to membership. Full national sovereignty was regained with the withdrawal of most of the Russian garrison in Poland by 1992, a process finally completed in August 1993.

The September 1993 elections simplified the party system by excluding all but the six parties that succeeded in gaining the minimum polling threshold of 5 per cent. The Communists’ successor parties, including the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (SDRP) grouping and the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), benefited from popular dissatisfaction with the socio-economic costs of the transformation, and gained a large majority. Waldemar Pawlak, the PSL leader, became prime minister, but his government was harassed by Wałęsa and accused of trying to slow economic reform. In early 1995, Wałęsa threatened to dissolve the legislature if the Pawlak government was not replaced. Revealing his intention to position himself for the 1995 presidential election, Wałęsa nominated a likely rival candidate, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, for the position of prime minister. He was overruled by the legislature, and Józef Oleksy was eventually named. Amid this tense atmosphere, Pawlak’s government lost a vote of no confidence and he resigned as prime minister, to be replaced in February 1995 by Oleksy. In April Wałęsa officially announced his candidacy for the October 1995 presidential elections, while condemning Oleksy’s “treasonable” decision to attend ceremonies in Moscow commemorating the end of World War II; Wojciech Jaruzelski was formally charged with complicity in the killing of demonstrators in 1970 during his term as defence minister. In May, Poland’s currency, the złoty, was floated on world currency markets for the first time, holding its value, while Solidarity trade unionists protesting against unemployment and pollution clashed violently with police in Warsaw.

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Kwaśniewski Elected President

Wałęsa finally lost the presidency in the November 1995 elections, yielding to his former prime ministerial nominee, Aleksander Kwaśniewski. Following allegations that he had passed information to Soviet and later Russian intelligence agents, Oleksy resigned as prime minister in January 1996, while asserting his innocence, to be replaced by Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz. Charges against Oleksy were dropped in April 1996, feeding speculation that Wałęsa had been behind a campaign to unseat him, while proceedings against Jaruzelski were suspended when the Gdańsk court trying the case referred it to the State Tribunal.

The controversial plan to develop the site adjacent to the former concentration camp at Auschwitz, which had attracted widespread opposition in Poland and abroad in March, continued to arouse hostility. The provincial government of Bielsko-Biała withdrew planning consent in June, after the developer resumed work. It was announced in June that the Gdańsk shipyard, cradle of the pro-democracy movement Solidarity, would not be saved from bankruptcy, which prompted angry reaction from shipyard workers. A measure to liberalize the law on abortion received both domestic majority support and condemnation from the Vatican when the measure was passed by the parliament in August. In spite of attempts by the Senat to veto the bill in October, it was formally approved by President Kwaśniewski in November. In early March 1997 the announcement of the closure of the Gdańsk shipyard resulted in demonstrations in Warsaw and Gdańsk, which prompted the government to propose a rescue plan involving the Szczecin shipyard. The Sejm (lower house) voted in March, subject to the consent of the Senat (upper house) and the president, to abolish the death penalty and to replace it with life imprisonment. The final draft of a new constitution was approved by the National Assembly in April, with dissent from Solidarity, who alleged that the proposed constitution was still linked to Poland’s Communist past. Also in April, a bill was passed by the Sejm, which required those seeking political and senior public office to disclose any links to the former Communist security service. The new constitution was approved by referendum in May. In the same month President Kwaśniewski and President Kuchma of the Ukraine signed a reconciliation pact relating to events during and after World War II. Pope John Paul II made an 11-day visit to Poland in late May, during which he spoke on NATO and EU membership, and the controversial law on abortion. In June a proposed referendum on the abortion issue was narrowly rejected in the Sejm and parliamentary elections were announced for September 21.

Catastrophic floods swept through Poland in July 1997, seriously affecting the south and south-western provinces of Opole, Wałbrzych, and Wrocław. The unusually heavy rainfall caused the rivers Oder and Neisse to burst their banks, resulting in more than 100 deaths. Estimates of the cost of the flood damage ranged between US$1,000 and US$3,000 million. The poor response of the government to the floods was seen as contributing to its failure in the polls in September.

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Elections and Change of Government

The Solidarity Electoral Alliance (AWS) emerged victorious from the September elections, ousting the ruling Democratic Left Alliance of former Communists by taking 34 per cent of the vote, and capturing 201 of the 460 seats in the Sejm. The nominee of the AWS and its centre-left coalition partner the Freedom Union, Jerzy Buzek, was appointed prime minister by President Kwaśniewski in October, and invited to form a government. In November the AWS filed an application to register as a new political party, with promotion of a market economy and Christian values among its aims. The Sejm voted in December to accept a Constitutional Tribunal ruling that had rescinded the 1996 law on abortion and effectively restored the 1993 law, which narrowed the criteria for legal abortion. The formation of a new political party, named the Christian Democratic Party of the Third Republic, by Lech Wałęsa in December, was seen by some observers as an indication of his intention to stand in the presidential elections scheduled for 2000. Also in December a protocol was signed scheduling Poland’s accession to NATO. A concordat with the Vatican was approved by the Sejm in January 1998 and included provision for the legalization of Church marriages. Legislation came into force in September that abolished the death penalty, and introduced life imprisonment.

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International Position

The biggest expansion in the 50-year history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) took place in March 1999, when Poland with two other former Warsaw pact countries, the Czech Republic and Hungary, joined the Western defence alliance. In November 1999 a United Nations report praised Poland's economic growth since the fall of Communism, but warned that a lack of investment in the countryside could lead to social instability. The report by the International Labour Organization said that most of the growth had been concentrated in urban areas leaving the countryside with high unemployment and predicted that further investment would be hampered if the government enacted its controversial plans to reform the tax system. Despite such promising economic growth indicators, the latter half of the year had seen much industrial unrest over the government's implementation of health, education, and pension reform, and widespread protests by farmers against government agriculture policy of grain procurement and low prices.

The growing unrest among farmers and other workers in the agricultural sector was reflected, in January 2000, in the formation of a radical National Peasant bloc, an alliance of three political groupings strongly opposed to EU-influenced reforms and policies. Agricultural protests, as well as strikes in health care and education sectors, continued throughout 2000.

In an effort to align the Polish penal law to the European Human Rights Convention, in April the president signed a protocol abolishing the death penalty, thereby confirming the decisions of the 1998 penal code. The Polish currency was freely floated on the international market, also in April (it had previously been fixed against the Euro and the US dollar). This was seen as a significant step toward the full convertibility of the złoty.

The ruling Solidarity-Freedom Union coalition collapsed in early June, and a new minority government was formed, with Buzek retaining his post as prime minister. The Freedom Union’s strategy to advocate wide-ranging and radical economic reforms had clashed with Solidarity’s socially oriented policy. The coalition government had become unpopular because of growing unemployment and increasing economic insecurity in heavy industry and agriculture. The new government pledged to continue Poland’s preparation for joining the EU in ways that would promote social and economic stability. Later in June Aleksander Kwaśniewski announced that he would stand in the presidential election planned for October.

In the run-up to the election, both the president and Lech Wałęsa underwent an investigation by a Vetting Tribunal on charges of their alleged involvement with the Communist secret service in the 1980s. Both politicians were cleared of the allegations in August.

In a move widely seen as a purely political act, the Roman Catholic Church in Poland expressed, in August, its regret and apologies for the Church’s attitude toward Jews during World War II. Acknowledging that some Polish people helped the Jews, the Church stated that it had not done enough to curb hostility and indifference in the largely anti-Semitic society at the time of the Holocaust. The statement followed a general apology issued in March by Pope John Paul II.

A wide social and party dispute over a mass privatization bill (the so-called enfranchisement bill), passed by the Sejm in July and by the Senate in August, led to the president vetoing the legislation in September. The bill provided for every citizen to become a shareholder in state assets; the Freedom Union as well as the Democratic Left Alliance warned that it would negatively affect the public finances and the economy in general. A subsequent attempt to overrule the presidential veto was unsuccessful.

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Kwaśniewski Re-elected

In the presidential election in October, Aleksander Kwaśniewski was re-elected for a second term, having secured almost 54 per cent of the vote. His closest challenger, Andrzej Olechowski (independent), won 17.3 per cent; Lech Wałęsa managed just 1.01 per cent of the vote and announced his resignation from politics.

President Kwaśniewski reaffirmed as his priority Poland’s membership of the EU. In November, Polish advisers on European integration decided to implement all legislation necessary to adopt EU standards one year earlier than planned, to ensure Poland’s entry by 2003.

In early 2001, the authorities began to allow the citizens access to files kept on them by the Communist secret police. A new body, the National Remembrance Institute, was founded to manage access to the archives and began its work in February. In March, President Kwaśniewski used his right to veto to block a bill designed to compensate citizens for property nationalized after World War II; the bill disregarded claims of emigrants, including Jews, and, according to the president and some observers, compensation costs were overestimated.