Underground Solidarity Leader Backs Strike, Elections Boycott

Solidarity underground leader Zbigniew Bujak on Friday urged Poles to stage massive protests next Thursday against planned food price increases and said Solidarity will call for a boycott of parliamentary elections in the fall.

“The new price rises will be for many groups of people simply murder,” Bujak said in Tygodnik Mazowsze, the most widely circulated Solidarity underground publication.

He appealed to the people to take part in a 15-minute general strike Feb. 28 called by Solidarity founder Lech Walesa and the underground leadership of the outlawed trade union federation.

“The Feb. 28 day of protest is an element in a strategy having to do with blocking the politics of price rises in the future,” Bujak said.

Urges ‘Massive Action’

“By a very massive action and very uncompromising attitude there is even a chance of overthrowing (the planned increases) even now,” he added.

The interview was published in the latest issue of Tygodnik Mazowsze dated Feb. 14 and made available Friday to Western reporters in Warsaw.

Bujak, 30, was chairman of Solidarity’s Warsaw chapter until the December, 1981, martial-law crackdown against the union. He has been a fugitive since and is a member of the underground’s five-man Temporary Coordinating Commission.

Regime Offering Too Little

Bujak said in the article that widespread opposition to the government-imposed price hikes would force the government to change its economic policy and introduce reforms.

He said the government is offering too little in compensation payments to lower-income families to make up for the food price boosts of 12% to 13% planned for March.

The official Communist Party newspaper Trybuna Ludu on Friday disputed claims that authorities are not concerned about “the worst off.”

Bujak said of the parliamentary elections, due to take place in the fall after being postponed last year: “We are getting prepared to count (the results of) a boycott ranging over the whole country. It is clear that the best and purest form of protest is a boycott.”

Bujak’s remarks were the first clear indication that Solidarity plans to call a boycott of the balloting.

Under government proposals, there are to be two candidates for most of the 460 seats in Parliament, but only the ruling Communist Party and other official organizations have the right to select candidates.

An effective boycott with turnout below 50% would have an international impact and cause Western parliaments to reconsider their relations with the Polish Sejm, or Parliament, Bujak said.