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On the campaign trail, Lech Walesa tells his audiences that he chose Tadeusz Mazowiecki to serve as prime minister last year because the former Roman Catholic journalist is "slow." "He won't even catch a flea," Walesa says, and the crowds cheer. Mazowiecki, a top Walesa adviser during a dark decade of fighting communism under the banner of Solidarity, warns against putting faith in "storytellers and magicians who promise to fulfill all our wishes." The country, he says, has come too far to take that risk.
These days the people of Poland are being inundated in the rhetoric of democracy. And this time it's for real. The country's Nov. 25 presidential election is the first in postcommunist Eastern Europe to pit one noncommunist against another. No more one-sided contests between once outlawed political parties and the old-time regimes. No more easy choices between the heroes of the revolution and their one time jailers. This is a power struggle between leaders who both fought on the same side of the barricades-but who now differ greatly over the direction Poland should follow. Some Poles are finding the transition hard to accept. "For the first time," says sociologist Tadeusz Szawiel. "they will have to be against someone with whom they are emotionally tied."
Walesa plays most easily on those ties. He tells his audiences that he wants to be president only to accelerate Poland's transition to democracy and adecent standard of living. "The richer you are, the richer Poland will be," he says. He is a virtuoso campaigner. His standard pitch begins with an appeal "not to let yourselves be directed by emotions, even toward me." But he soon assures his audience, "I am one of you," and points out his rural origins and working-class pedigree. Then he may float one of his economic-reform proposals--a scheme to offer every Pole more than $10,000 to set up a new business. Walesa calls it an interest-free, 20-year loan.
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Although Walesa no longer boasts he will win 80 percent of the vote, he radiates confidence that he will exceed the 50 percent required for victory in the first round, despite the presence of four minor candidates. Mazowiecki's chances are "minimal," he told Newsweek, and the best thing for Poland would be his withdrawal from the race; under those conditions, Walesa says, Mazowiecki could stay on as prime minister. However, Mazowiecki told NEWSWEEK he had made "a choice connected with a certain vision of democracy and the presidency," leaving no doubt that he is in the race to the end.
But Mazowiecki has been underestimated before, both by the communists and Walesa. His supporters liken it to a race between a tortoise and the hare. Though he has been in office only a year, Mazowiecki grasps a basic principle of incumbency. He is running on his record, meanwhile accusing the challenger of issuing unrealistic promises and playing on base emotions--like the desire for revenge against former communists--that will derail the country's new "stability." After meeting with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl last week, Mazowiecki came away with a promise that a treaty recognizing the current German-Polish border would be signed by the end of the month "It's a big success," says Mazowiecki. "We achieved everything we wanted." At home, Mazowiecki's economic program has ended hyperinflation, filled stores with food and produced a trade surplus estimated at $2.9 billion for 1990. He tells his campaign audiences he will privatize half of all state-owned industries within three years; the Finance minister claims a sharp recession is beginning to ease. Still, the country has a long way to go; real wages have fallen nearly 30 percent this year and unemployment may reach 15 percent next year.
The campaign spells the end of a great revolutionary movement. Solidarity has split into Walesa's Center Alliance and Mazowiecki's Civic Movement for Democratic Action, known by its Polish acronym, ROAD. In Parliament, the balance is already tipping in Walesa's favor. Historian Bronislaw Geremek, who supported Mazowiecki, stepped down last week as the leader of the Solidarity bloc in Parliament. In his place the legislators chose a former steelworker who backs Walesa. "One Solidarity elite has been at the top for 10 years," says Walesa adviser Zdzislaw Najder. "It's time for a change in elites." The change mirrors a larger class conflict. Walesa leads among workers, older people on pensions and those who feel they have sacrificed most under the "shock therapy" economic policies introduced early this year. Support for the highly cultured Mazowiecki is strongest among urban intellectuals; the more educated a voter, the more likely he is to support ROAD.
Walesa says the government must make economic changes fast because Polish workers are growing restless. Last week coal miners staged a two hour warning strike to protest the high price they are paying for the transition from a communist to a free-market economy. The Mazowiecki camp charges that Walesa is fomenting such unrest as a smokescreen. His real motive, they said, is to undermine the prime minister's surprising popularity.
To his most fervent opponents, Walesa would be dangerous either in victory or in defeat. If he loses, they fear, he could destabilize the country by instigating new popular protests. Walesa denies any such intention but argues that he alone commands enough authority to lead Poland through the next stage of difficult reforms. If he wins? He has hinted that he may keep some of Mazowiecki's team, particularly Finance Minister Balcerowicz, to demonstrate that he is continuing rather than breaking with the reforms already in place. He remains a formidable figure, grudgingly respected even by some of those who now oppose him. "At difficult moments, Walesa has always come to his senses and been able to choose the best solution," says Sen. Andrzej Celinski, a Mazowiecki supporter. But Mazowiecki has already proven that he can make the kind of unpopular decisions required by the country's desperate circumstances. No one ever said that democracy was easy, and Poland is learning that lesson this month.
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