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Poland Popular Election of a President
Although Walesa had handpicked Mazowiecki to be prime
minister and had played a key role in persuading the
population
to grant the young government a grace period, tensions
between
the two men emerged in early 1990. Perhaps regretting his
decision not to seek the office of prime minister himself,
Walesa
began to criticize the Mazowiecki government. After the
formal
dissolution of the PZPR in January 1990, Walesa argued
that the
time had come to discard the concessions from the Round
Table
Agreement that prolonged the influence of the old regime
(see Political Parties
, this ch.). Sensing the depth of public
discontent over falling living standards and rising
unemployment,
he leveled ever harsher criticism at Mazowiecki. In
return, the
Mazowiecki circle accused Walesa of destructive
sloganeering. The
acrimonious relations between the two camps led to the
emergence
of the first post-Solidarity political groupings. The
pro-Walesa
Center Alliance (Porozumienie Centrum) called for
accelerating
the pace of reform and purging former communist appointees
as
rapidly as possible. The Mazowiecki forces set up the
Citizens'
Movement for Democratic Action.
The split grew more serious following President
Jaruzelski's
announcement that he would retire before the expiration of
his
term in 1995. With the support of both noncommunist
factions,
parliament enacted legislation to make possible the direct
election of the president. Both Walesa and Mazowiecki ran
for the
office in the fall of 1990, together with four other
candidates
of widely varying political associations and experience.
The campaign was bitter and divisive. Despite the
heated
rhetoric of the campaign, the candidates differed
relatively
little on substantive issues. Their disagreements stemmed
mostly
from the different leadership styles of the men. Wounded
by
attacks on his intelligence, Walesa revealed a streak of
antiSemitism with remarks about the Jewish roots of the ruling
clique
in Warsaw
(see Ethnic Groups
, ch. 2). Meanwhile, falling
living
standards increased voters' disenchantment with the
government's
economic program. An uninspiring public speaker and a poor
campaign organizer, Mazowiecki could not rally support
during the
short time remaining before the election.
Many voters apathetic toward the two front runners were
attracted to the iconoclastic Stanislaw Tyminski, a
wealthy
expatriate with no political experience. Tyminski's
campaign made
effective use of his outsider status. His wild accusations
against the leading candidates found a receptive audience.
Tyminski asserted that given a chance, he could make all
Poles
rich.
The election results were a stunning rejection of the
Mazowiecki government. With only 18 percent of the total
vote,
Mazowiecki finished third behind Walesa (40 percent) and
the
maverick Tyminski (23 percent). The candidate of the
Social
Democracy of the Republic of Poland (SdRP), successor to
the
PZPR, received more than 9 percent of the vote,
demonstrating the
residual strength of the old party elite.
A runoff election between Tyminski and Walesa was
necessitated by all candidates' failure to achieve a
majority.
Walesa sought the votes of Mazowiecki's supporters,
promising to
continue the basic course of economic transformation
initiated by
Mazowiecki's minister of finance, Leszek Balcerowicz
(see Marketization and Stabilization
, ch. 3). But the ad
hominem
attacks of the campaign made immediate reconciliation
impossible.
With the reluctant support of the Mazowiecki faction and
the
implicit endorsement of the Roman Catholic Church, Walesa
won the
runoff with almost 75 percent of the vote to become
Poland's
first popularly elected president. Although Walesa had
prevailed,
the bitter campaign had badly tarnished his image and
worsened
the splits in the old Solidarity coalition.
Data as of October 1992
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