Poland – going forth with a new republic?

Date: 29/09/05

At one end of the avenue that runs through Czestochowa, spiritual home of Polish Catholicism, is the icon of the Black Madonna and its pilgrimage monastery; at the other end a chimney stack rises over a new industrial city.

Here, the communists forced pious Poland to put its clean-cut cheek next to the ugly jowl of the workers' republic. Since 1989, these two poles - Catholic tradition and the communist legacy - have continued to put down the political markers, spawning value-laden issue politics from the right and a secular, technocratic post-communist left.

In these elections, though, neither has left much of a mark. The left's defeat was crushing, as expected; and champions of 'Catholic values' have remained largely quiet on neuralgic topics such as abortion. Could Poland be entering a new phase?

It is. Regardless of the results, it would have been, because with EU accession a fait accompli, the most painful reforms over, and Pope John Paul II gone, politicians needed to find and show a new sense of purpose.

Potentially, the elections could have seen the return of a meaningful left-right divide, 'meaningful' because the truly distinctive feature of the past 15 years has been consistency. Leszek Balcerowicz, the shock trooper in the shock therapy of the 1990s, summed it up with his 1997 slogan "Left, right, but always forward" - and where 'forward' led was clear: to the EU, to NATO, to a market economy, via deep and painful reform. But the possibility of a new right and a new left was swiftly rendered irrelevant by the left's implosion.

The debate, then, has really been a matter of the two leading right-wing parties - the Law & Justice Party (PiS) and Civic Platform (PO) - determining what direction is 'forward'.

In key areas, when they look forward, they look to the past. "Europe needs to recover its memory of Central Europe," argues the likely next president, Donald Tusk, and it is Poland that can heal Europe's memory.

On the domestic front, the winner is again looking back. Victory, it initially seemed, would go to Tusk's Civic Platform and its vision of a brave new flat-tax, liberal world. In the end, PiS won with talk of social solidarity. In effect, it promised a hand to those left behind in the transition process. But the PiS also looked forward - to the creation of a 'Fourth Republic', the product of a "moral revolution" underpinned by the ideals of the Solidarity movement that will rid Poland of the "oligarchic network of comradely ties" that scars the current Third Republic. Civic Platform, too, believes a new phase has begun: the election "marks the end of the post-communist era," believes its leader, Jan Rokita.

Such lofty claims and ambitions may seem absurdly grandiose since, typically, Polish coalition governments form, then fracture or fall. Parties emerge swiftly, take power quickly, and implode abruptly. The new coalition government will have history to overcome, as well as its own differences.

Unable to put down deep roots, with short (and shared) electoral records, and with agreement on most of the big ideas, parties have largely competed on style. But if a Fourth Republic or a post-post-communist era is to emerge and survive, the new government needs more than style and grandiloquence. It needs to prove its competence and incorruptibility (or score high on those fronts). Perhaps only a disbelief in the Democratic Left Alliance's economic ability (unemployment is about 18%) and a string of scandals can explain why so many moved right or did not vote (turnout was a dismal 39%). A Fourth Republic - if it emerges - will be a matter of being neither left nor right, but better.

To last, a Fourth Republic government must also somehow bridge Poland's deep cultural cleavage. Secular Poles will surely not mutely accept a "moral revolution" that makes Catholicism more intrusive. A Fourth Republic, then, probably needs to be neither Catholic nor non-Catholic, and at least a little 'liberal'.

For the time being, talk of a Fourth Republic may not be meaningful. For now, it is perhaps enough to paraphrase the poet Tadeusz Rozewicz's words about 1990s Poland and simply say that something has ended, something wants to begin - and perhaps it has already.

The election results

• Law and Justice: 27% (155 seats in lower house)
• Civic Platform: 24% (133 seats)
• Self-Defence: 11% (56 seats)
• Democratic Left Alliance: 11% (55 seats)
• League of Polish families: 8% (34 seats)
• Peasants' Party: 7% (25 seats)

Results for parties with more than a 5% share of the vote, from 90% of votes counted.

• Andrew Gardner is a joint editor of Transitions Online. A longer version of this article can be found at www.tol.cz

Article takes a look at the political situation in Poland after the Parliamentary elections of 25 September which was won by the two leading right-wing parties - the Law & Justice Party (PiS) and Civic Platform (PO). The two parties were to form a new Government coalition.

• Primary Source

Wolfram Nordsieck: Parties and Elections in Europe: Poland http://www.parties-and-elections.de/poland.html

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