Apathy, Protests, Boycott Mark Polish Council Elections

Apathy, student protests and an opposition boycott marked voting across Poland on Sunday in elections for provincial and local council members.

In Warsaw, hundreds of students staged make-believe elections to mock officials, and in Gdansk youthful supporters of the banned Solidarity independent trade union chanted, “We won’t vote!” and “Out with communism!” as they threw rocks at police.

About 26 million Poles were eligible to vote for 254,000 candidates trying for 108,846 council seats that are renewed every four years.

According to figures published by the official news agency PAP, the voter turnout was the lowest ever recorded here under 44 years of Communist rule. The agency said about 56% of eligible voters cast ballots.

The vote was held under a new electoral law that has been denounced by critics of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski’s government who had hoped for greater liberalization.

A Protest Boycott

The opposition announced a boycott to protest the lopsided prior distribution of seats among the Communist Party and its allies.

They said the authorities were choosing the people’s representatives for them.

According to election officials the distribution of seats will be 43% for the Communist Party, 18% and 4% respectively for its Peasant and Democratic Party allies and 35% for non-party candidates.

The prearranged distribution left the size of the turnout as the only measure of political rivalry in the event.

Students and workers refusing to vote marched in Warsaw, Gdansk and Krakow in protest at the restrictions.

Named ‘Mr. Poland’

In Warsaw, hundreds of youths marched into the Old Town square to a cacophony of trumpets and drums chanting “All power to the councilors!” and “Jaruzelski, king of Poland!”

In a mock election, they voted to name a watching police captain “Mr. Poland,” chasing away an “independent” candidate to shouts of “Away with the opposition!”

He fled, tailed by three men with raincoats, soft hats and pistols, to roars of laughter.

Police then ordered the crowd out of the square. Shouts of “We love the party!” rang out as they left.

Elsewhere in Warsaw, voting was slow. Worshipers pouring out of churches after Sunday Mass ignored polling stations as they walked home.

In the southern city of Krakow, opposition sources said about 2,000 people with a banner saying “If You Want to Starve, Vote” tried to march from a church in the industrial suburb of Nowa Huta to the local council building.

The crowd dispersed quietly when a large force of police blocked their way, the sources said.

The election was the first in more than 40 years in which Polish voters have had to mark their choice of candidate on the ballot paper to be sure their vote counts.

Stalinist-type “mandatory lists” in which officially favored candidates at the top automatically received the vote if no voter choice was indicated were abolished in most cases.

Under Jaruzelski’s reforms, two or three candidates vied for each seat. But each was screened by local commissions of the pro-Communist Patriotic Front for National Rebirth. To avoid any political contest, candidates also had the same party, group or background.

Ten percent of the 6,877 provincial council seats were reserved for favored official candidates on a special electoral list in which the number of candidates matched the number of seats.