Poland’s voters delivered a decisive result in Sunday’s Polish
Election. Like voters in neighboring Germany, Poland’s electorate
has handed victory to the center-right. But, unlike Germany —
currently embroiled in political uncertainty after Angela Merkel
and Gerhard Schroeder both failed to gain overall majorities in
their election on September 18 — a clean break appears to have
been made. With the defeat of the incumbent ruling Democratic Left
Alliance (SLD), Poland is now free to forge powerful new free
market economic policies under political leaders with no connection
to the country’s communist past.
Sunday’s result showed that the two center-right parties — the
national conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, and liberal
conservative Civic Platform (PO) — together had attracted over 50%
of the popular vote. Law and Justice garnered 26.4% (155 seats), up
from 9.5% in the last election in 2001, Civic Platform 24.23% (133
seats), the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) 11%, the left-wing
Self-Defense Party 11.7%, League of Polish Families 7.9%, and the
Peasant’s Party (rural interests) 5.7%. Following this clear
margin, it is expected that the PiS (led by party leader Jaroslaw
Kaczynski during the campaign) and the PO (led by Jan Rokita) will
form a governing coalition, but with 45-year old PiS economic
minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz to be elected to the Sejm
(Parliament) as Prime Minister. On October 9th, a further election
will take place for the post of Poland’s presidency between Donald
Tusk (PO) and Lech Kaczynski (PiS), Mayor of Warsaw and Jaroslaw’s
Kaczynski’s identical twin brother.
Victory for the center-right can be laid squarely at the door of
the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), a party steeped
in corruption and mismanagement of the Polish economy and led by
outgoing President Alexander Kwasniewski. On Sunday the SLD
suffered its worst defeat since 1989.
Since election in 2001, Kwasniewski, a former communist whose
positive achievements in foreign affairs include managing Poland’s
entry into NATO and the EU, forging closer links with the United
States, and strengthening Poland’s position as a regional actor,
has been stalked by his failure on the Polish economy.
He presided over steadily rising unemployment and proved unable
to restructure Poland’s agrarian-based economy ravaged by the
strictures imposed by Poland’s period of Soviet-imposed communist
rule from 1945 to 1989. Today, unemployment in Poland stands at 18
percent, the highest within the European Union. For those aged
under 25 it is even worse — a shocking 40%. Young taxi drivers in
Poland ask foreign passengers wistfully about employment
opportunities abroad, and the reputation of the “Polish plumber”
(mobile, willing, and able to work harder and better for lower
wages in the rest of the EU) has become apocryphal.
In the past four years Kwasniewski’s reputation faltered. He was
associated in Polish popular opinion with running a government
oiled by a cozy network of former communist insiders who, since
1993, had successfully re-invented themselves as market capitalists
— and who largely escaped censure for their actions under
communism. His government became notorious for sleaze and financial
corruption — only this month the SLD presidential candidate,
Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, withdrew from the running after
accusations of insider trading.
In contrast, the center-right parties, in particular
presidential candidate Donald Tusk and the conservative-sounding
Kaczynski twins, acquired during the campaign reputations as
straight-talking men of action. Campaigning on traditional values
combining the free market approach of other conservative and
Christian Democrat parties in the EU and Poland’s strong Catholic
ethic has paid off comprehensively. The PiS/PO campaign convinced
Polish voters that the SLD’s socialist-led economic model was
broken, corrupt, and associated with the iniquities of the past. It
sought to link the SLD with the old command-control mindsets
imposed under communism which have so haunted Poland over the past
fifty years. An old workers’ saying under Polish communism and
elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain went as follows: “We pretend to
work, they pretend to pay us.” Economic stagnation and
dis-incentivization were the result and cast a long shadow.
Sunday’s PiS/PO victory thus reflects a deeply-felt and
widespread popular feeling in Poland of the need to dispel the
past, create jobs, and move to a rosier future as respected EU
member (Poland joined the EU in May 2004) with all the material
benefits that membership is expected to deliver. As PO leader Jan
Rokita remarked at the polls on Sunday: “These elections mark the
end of the post-communist era.”
The PiS/PO government will now seek to introduce a raft of new
economic policies after the presidential result is confirmed in two
weeks time and final haggling takes place on the administration’s
exact composition and political complexion.
CENTRAL TO THIS AGENDA will be policies designed to lower taxes
possibly to include a new 15% flat tax system — a single tax paid
by all except the lowest wage earners. Additionally there will be
measures to further reduce Poland’s budget deficit from 3.9% (2004)
to an expected 3.6% by end 2005. Like its British counterpart, the
new government will be skeptical of joining the Euro having
witnessed the economic woes of Germany, Italy, and France.
(Regardless, achieving a budget deficit of under 3% by 2008-2010
would be necessary.)
The government has also promised to cut the burden of corporate
regulation, and, like Angela Merkel’s proposed reforms for Germany,
implement measures to kick start employment. Anti-corruption
measures will further feature in the new program plus proposals to
introduce a U.K.-style “first-past-the-post” electoral system.
Measures to reform and fund the Polish welfare system will be
included but will be a key challenge whilst Poland’s wealth ranks
50% below the EU average and Poland’s growth is expected to slow
from 5.4% in 2004 to 3.3% by the end of 2005.
And the new Polish government will have to skillfully manage
voter expectations toward the European Union. Poland continues to
anticipate an EU “membership dividend” whereby new members —
Ireland in the 1990s is the classic example — have traditionally
been the beneficiaries of large capital flows fed by Brussels from
the other, wealthier EU states. Allied to this, the government can
be expected to lobby strongly for reform of the Common Agriculture
Policy (CAP) in favor of Polish farmers. Poland’s new leaders will
take a firm position against the proposed EU constitution, halted
in its tracks by France and the Netherlands this year, and instead
will be looking for the EU to provide a flexible and profitable
association as set out under the Nice Treaty of 2001.
In foreign affairs, the PiS/PO government will seek to convince
other EU states to take a firm stance toward her eastern neighbors:
Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. In Belarus the issue, highlighted
during the election campaign, is of ethnic Poles suffering alleged
mistreatment under the government/dictatorship of Alexander
Lukashenko. In Ukraine, Poland has taken a prominent role in
championing the (faltering) moves toward greater democracy
following the “Orange Revolution,” and the new government will take
an equally supportive role as its SLD predecessor.
And managing the traditionally cool relations with Russia —
many Poles suspect growing authoritarianism on the part of Vladimir
Putin and antipathy toward Poland — and the vexatious issue of
Russian “domination” of energy supplies in Eastern Europe will
require the new center-right government to show imagination and
strength of character. Finally, 1,400 Polish troops remain
committed in support of the Coalition in Iraq and the government
will have to decide shortly as to whether they will withdraw by the
end of 2005 or if they will remain.
As they shrug off the past, Poles will now demand their new
government rise to the challenges of unemployment and economic
prosperity. Last month Poles celebrated 25 years since the
formation of the Solidarity Trade Union, whose example and actions
led directly to the end of communist tyranny in their country and
elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Center-Right, unlike in Germany,
now has the chance over the next four years to deliver on the
Polish economy.
Thirty-nine million Poles will be watching.
