Walesa Runs for President

...How can the guy who put the whole system in place now be the Prime Minister...

...Using imagery from poker, Walesa refers to his present advisers as " 10s" and to his one-time aides as "aces...

...I feel that Jews who remain in Poland are entitled to, and have, full participation in Polish political and cultural life...

...But Americans don't always act logically...

...The public, Walesa argues, is simply fed up with reading about how former Communist apparatchiks signed sweetheart deals between ministries or enterprises they headed and the new private firms to which they moved...

...The only question is how long the process will take and what the price of the transition will be...

...But that's their problem and not Walesa's or Poland's...

...But when all is said and done, Solidarity, the union he has shaped, is highly democratic...

...he has interceded with the Minister of Culture to step up efforts to protect historical Jewish sites as landmarks...

...Nevertheless, Polish life is more and more coming to be dominated by highly politicized reporting and by partisan hyperbole that portrays Walesa as a potential Caesar...

...Then he goes on to tick off the evidence to the contrary: He has erected a plaque inmemory of the victims of antiJewish pogroms...

...Within weeks of his pressing for a speed-up of the reform process, Parliament passed a landmark privatization law, and parliamentary leader Bronislaw Geremek expressed support for advancing the presidential elections...

...Jaruzelski didn't have the slightest chance of being elected President...

...The real problem is that some of Walesa's Jewish critics have long sought to hide their Jewishness and to render Jews invisible in Poland...

...Many who oppose Walesa complain that he has become obsessed with and seeks to emulate the actions of one man, General Jozef Pilsudski, who led a democratic Polish State for six years and later ruled as an iron-fisted dictator...

...His formidable opponents have lined up behind the candidacy of the present Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, and have formed their own Citizens Movement-Democratic Action Party (better known by its Polish acronym, ROAD...

...Only to remove obstacles stymieing the transition to democracy...

...Walesa believes the union has strong local and national leadership and will be a potent force in Polish life...

...Walesa's determined push for rapid change is motivated by his sense that Polish workers, now suffering a 50 per cent decline in li ving standards, will no longer abide the continued presence of Communists in the upper reaches of Parliament, the ministries and management...

...My idea was for the President to intercede to prevent the violation of law in a period before the Parliament or the govemment have a chance to act...

...Now Walesa is again at the center of Polish political life...

...Prime Minister Mazowiecki, a former editor of a Catholic monthly and a man who was deeply involved with Solidarity's struggle, is an impressive rival...

...Even someof his fiercest political opponents, including Adam Michnik, editor of the independent daily Gazeta Wyborcza and a member of Parliament, are quick to point out that neither Walesa nor his advisers are anti-Semites...

...The Solidarity leader finds the whole controversy frustrating...

...Ten years ago, as an unemployed electrician, he climbed the wall of the Lenin Shipyard only a short distance away to lead an epoch making strike...

...He even smiles and relishes the idea that some day soon he may face his Solidarity colleagues in wage negotiations...

...But on other domestic matters he refuses to be pinned down, contending that he prefers to stand above the partisan fray and try to gain the votes of the vast majority —a position that may be less tenable as the campaign progresses...

...Communism can no longer be sustained...

...What we have now is an immoral order...

...Recent actions emanating from Washington have meanwhile disappointed Walesa, especially the finally declined invitation extended to General Jaruzelski to visit the United States in mid-October...

...During the last three months, driven in part by pressure from workers increasingly unhappy about the slow pace of political reform and in part by his own considerable ambitions, Walesa has been positioning himself for the two-round balloting set to start November 25...

...is a democracy, and it must remember that we Poles still have to realize our democracy...

...A twofoot-high statue of Pilsudski occupies a corner of Walesa's office...

...If I speak out about manifestations of anti-Semitism, he notes, "my friend Adam Michnik tells me to drop the matter and not to place undue emphasis on Jewish issues...

...Walesa himself recognizes that his recent metaphor of an axe-wielding president who issues decrees was unfortunate: "I meant only that when a system is changing there are so many loopholes, so many gaps, they have to be resolved...

...In addition, the tens of thousands of union activists who have stuck with the Solidarity chairman through thick and thin over 10 tumultuous years will soon be pounding the pavement in his behalf...

...And the sooner we are rid of it the better," he says...

...This proposal is like a joke at a funeral," he laughs...

...I'm a Jew and not ashamed of it...

...They're doing funny things...

...Gesturing vehemently, he argues that the disintegration of Poland's Communist Party should have signaled an end to the April 1989 round-table agreement that still ensures a parliamentary majority for the deflated Communists and their ex-junior partners, the United Peasants' Party and the Democratic Party...

...He is a strong defender of Jewish, Ukrainian and other minority rights...

...But the expectation here is that those numbers will change as the campaign heats up...

...That much criticism of the Solidarity chairman is hyperbole is apparent from the proposal of Jan Litynski, a leader of ROAD, that Walesa would make an excellent Prime Minister with Mazowiecki as President...

...The Solidarity chairman is staunchly backed by the Right-leaning Center Alliance Party...

...This is what Polish workers want," he says...

...For over a year, the Solidarity leader had maintained a low national profile...

...Walesa stresses, first, that he would continue the swift transition to a market economy and rapid privatization...

...Having once before jumped fences, he is eager to scale Poland's "highest wall"—the barrier that surrounds Belweder Palace...

...Now that the political responsibilities have been shifted onto the shoulders of the emerging parties, he thinks the trade union will grow...

...Walesa's charismatic personality is likely to give him an edge over the low-keyed, methodical Mazowiecki in any face-to-face debates...

...But when I follow such advice, Jewish activists accuse me of failing to confront anti-Semitism...

...What about the future of the Solidarity trade union if its chairman is elected President of the country...

...At the same time, they have accepted some of his prescriptions...

...last November, he was lionized as a conquering hero...

...He is unabashed in declaring that he will be moving into Belweder Palace, the presidential residence occupied by his arch rival and ex-captor, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, whose term has been cut short by Parliament...

...I will be President, because that's what the people want...

...I asked him precisely what kind of programhe would pursue...

...He also would press for the return of property questionably transferred to private accounts by Communist ministers and managers...

...Decrees were needed, decrees are needed," he summarizes, "and they'll be needed for a long time to come...

...I didn't know exactly what to expect when I arrived for our meeting here, having last encountered him at the Solidarity Congress in April, shortly before the emergence of the political rivalries that have driven a wedge in the once unified Solidarity movement...

...What we began is inexorable...

...Walesa is disappointed in the actions of his erstwhile colleagues...

...But not against the Parliament...

...Jewish activists in Walesa's camp rush to his defense...

...There is no other way out...

...Former Warsaw trade union leader Zbigniew Janas, a pro-Mazowiecki member of Parliament, confirms the exaggerations distorting thecurrent political debate as partisan passions rise...

...he was arrested while trying to attend commemorations of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising...

...It's not a question of whether I will be President, " Walesa asserts...

...Walesa's path to the Presidency is hardly clear...

...For a period of his life he was an outstanding leader who knew what he was doing and did a great deal for the country...

...But Walesa insists the General is not a political model: "I respect what he did for Poland...

...Adrian Karatnycky, a previous contributor to The New Leader, is director of research in the International Affairs Department of the AFL-CIO and co-author of "The Hidden Nations: The People Challenge the Soviet Union, to be published by Morrow this fall...

...They did not take advantage of the system when it collapsed and changed in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe...

...But there is something of the friendly, reassuring uncle to him, too, and he sees politics as a wondrous game...

...While his opponents are now searching for a way to accommodate Walesa, he derides Litynski's suggestion...

...and he has counted a number of Jews in his inner circle...

...But his cheerful demeanor and often passionate responses to questions project an image of a modern politician eager to head what may soon be a normal European state...

...On the road to democracy, such a possibility existed...

...On September 17 he formally entered the race for President...

...Not everyone, of course, agrees...

...A Walesa victory, though, would provide the breathing space to introduce more reforms, since as a new man at the top he would surely enjoy a "honeymoon" period...

...The awareness that he would need to have a few aces in his hand may be one reason why he has so far tempered his criticism of ROAD...

...Placing your bets on him was absolutely without logic...

...My basic idea was for the President to act and then for the Parliament to quickly pass appropriate legislation...

...He would demand the immediate withdrawal of the remaining Soviet troops in Poland...

...In recent weeks, both at home and in the Western press, Walesa has come under severe criticism for alleged antidemocratic and anti-Semitic propensities...

...What troubles them, thesecritics say, is the fact that anti-Semites are the bedrock of pro-Walesa supporters...

...he nominated Elie Wiesel for the Nobel Peace Prize...

...I or my opponents, who would prefer to preserve a political monopoly based on a false unity...

...Regrettably, many Jews who were active in the Solidarity movement sought to de-emphasize their ethnic origins...

...When the Solidarity chairman came to the U.S...

...Yet today there is an edge of annoyance in Walesa's voice when he speaks of the United States: "The U.S...

...Not against the law, not against the democracy...

...He was the second private citizen ever to address a joint session of Congress, and he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George Bush, who two years earlier had stood alongside him in Gdansk in a show of American support...

...Who then is the bigger democrat...

...Viewed from today's perspective, however, certain actions, particularly the violation of democracy, were evidence not of strength but of weakness...

...Solidarity's long years of doubling as an umbrella political coalition, he observes, were detrimental to its activities on the labor side...

...He is convinced that for the Polish economy to work, the vestiges of the nomenklatura system of political patronage must be uprooted to clear the way for a new generation of competent leaders and managers...

...Lech is sometimes intemperate," Janas says, "He's sometimes difficult to get along with...

...Before the press prints charges of my anti-Semitic tendencies, I ask only one thing, that such charges be documented and that I be confronted directly by such evidence," he says emphatically...

...I havesome misgivings about those whom I nominated to make the reforms...

...But things have gone a bit further and I'm not at all interested...

...Walesa's critics contend that his campaign for political and economic "acceleration" is dangerous and destabilizing...

...In the area of foreign relations Walesa exhibits little reticence...

...Walesa also does not understand the basis for the contention that he is antiSemitic...

...And he is firmly persuaded that the Soviet Union's days are numbered: "One of the first things I said as a politician was that the USSR has only one way out: to dissolve itself and to then reunite on the basis of freedom and democracy...

...Over the last decade Lech Walesa has demonstrated his staying power and his shrewd political instincts...

...Should Walesa win the election, he would confront the problem of assuming office without the sage and seasoned counsel of many of his most astute advisers, who have gone over to Mazowiecki'steam...

...The problem," says essayist and former political prisoner Czeslaw Bielecki, "is not with Lech Walesa...

...A mid-September poll showed him receiving 50 per cent of the vote and Walesa 3 5 per cent, with 15 per cent undecided...

...They want it even more than the elites...

...I wanttorule with at least 80 per cent support," he declares optimistically...

...I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't...

...About the accusations that he is an autocrat, for example, Walesa fairly bristles: "I'm trying to create a multiparty political system, based on a Left and Right...

...POLISH POLITICS Walesa Runs for President BY ADRIAN KARATNYCKY Gdansk Sitting in his spacious, sparely furnished office, Lech Walesa has the easy look of a confident fighter who has just stepped into the political ring...

...But after having entrusted former associates in the Solidarity movement with the task of forming and running the government, Walesa is once more convinced his country needs him...

...Perhaps the use of the term decree aroused concern...