Poland To the Brink -- and Back Again

By Jill Smolowe

If politicians had their own Academy Awards, the statuette for cliff-hanger scenarios would certainly go to Poland. Last week the Sejm, the governing lower house of Parliament, tackled the task of electing a Prime Minister to head the new government. President Wojciech Jaruzelski chose Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak for the post. But Kiszczak ran into such fierce resistance from both the Solidarity opposition and some legislators allied with the Communists that frantic politicking continued right down to the wire. Communist leaders pressured their rebellious allies within the United Peasant Alliance, offering important positions and threatening to retract privileges. The tactics paid off. When the vote was counted Wednesday, Kiszczak emerged on top: 237 to 173, with ten abstentions.

Thus Poland once again strode to the brink of a political abyss, then pulled back. Legislators opted to make the best of the bargain struck at the round- table talks three months ago, when Communist Party and Solidarity leaders agreed on the broad outlines of a program for achieving political pluralism and a more open economy. That meant, among other things, a continuation of Communist Party rule. Acceptance of the scheme has been grudging at best, and its future course is anything but certain. The delicate political balance is threatened by radicals within Solidarity who are itching to leave the opposition benches and lay claim to the popular mandate the trade union won in the June 4 legislative elections, when it captured all 161 seats open to it in the Sejm and 99 out of the 100 Senate seats. The economic experiment also ! faces challenges. Last week, as a monthlong wage-and-price freeze was lifted, prices doubled and even trebled.

Given the inherent frictions between the Communists and the opposition, it is questionable whether any Communist candidate for Prime Minister would have coasted to victory. Even so, some Solidarity legislators found Kiszczak, 63, particularly tough to take. During his eight-year tenure as Interior Minister, Kiszczak controlled the police and paramilitary forces and was responsible for hunting down and jailing Solidarity activists during the martial-law crackdown that began in 1981. Many of those activists are now seated in the Sejm.

But Kiszczak's experience at quelling unrest may be a primary reason why Jaruzelski pushed his candidacy. The seriousness of Poland's economic crisis cannot be overstated: labor unrest is growing, industrial production falling and annual inflation galloping along at 150%. Perhaps most serious of all, basic food staples are in short supply, a fact underscored last week by President Bush's announcement that the U.S. will provide Poland with a special $59 million food-aid package. The urgency is not lost in Warsaw. "If the future government does not find effective means to change this situation," Kiszczak warned in his acceptance speech, "the country will be threatened by a catastrophe, a catastrophe that might lead to more than just a change of government."

Tough policies more than tough talk will be needed to overhaul the economy. A World Bank report shows that state subsidies in Poland have grown alarmingly in recent years, and now amount to 30% of budget expenditures. To continue the supports is to risk bankruptcy. Yet removing them could create just the sort of hardship that provoked violent unrest in the past, leading to the downfall of governments in 1956, 1970 and again in 1980, the year Solidarity was born.

Last week's decision by the outgoing government to abandon rationing and other controls immediately and permit market forces to control prices had lightning impact: the cost of bread soared 100%, milk nearly 300% and some cuts of meat more than 400%. But the move brought no quick improvement in food supplies because prices and incomes had been frozen throughout July, and Poles, aware that sharp increases loomed, had cleared store shelves of most commodities.

So far, grumbling has been kept to a minimum. The blow has been softened by a rise of more than 100% in wages in the past twelve months; with too much money chasing too few goods, large amounts of cash are waiting to be soaked up. Moreover, workers and pensioners will be cushioned from the impact of diminishing subsidies by cost of living adjustments. Still, consumer stoicism is likely to evaporate quickly if the new market policy fails to improve supplies of foodstuffs and prices continue to rise.

And worse may be yet to come. To restructure the country's antiquated industry, Poland must abandon many of the concepts that have governed the economy for 40 years. Inefficient mines, mills and factories will have to be closed. Unemployment will have to be tolerated. So will growing differentials in wages and living standards. Hardest of all for party members will be the loss of cradle-to-grave security.

To realize such sweeping changes, the Communist Party must secure the cooperation not only of Solidarity but of its own allies as well. However, as last week's threatened defection by the Peasants demonstrated, there is growing impatience with the compromise implicit in the round-table agreement. Observed the Solidarity daily Gazeta Wyborcza in an editorial: "Society does not understand why the new Cabinet, which would like to call itself a government of national salvation, should be headed by a representative of a party responsible for creating the situation from which society must be saved."

Events may yet force Solidarity off the back benches. Given the vast voter disillusionment exposed by the June elections, Kiszczak's government may be nothing more than an interim administration. Though elections are four years off, it is quite possible that barring a coup or some other unconstitutional act, Poland could bury Communism within a year. Then -- ready or not -- Solidarity may find itself at the helm, hunting for a way out of Poland's economic morass.

With reporting by John Borrell/Warsaw