Communist Label a Polish Liability : Party’s Support Weak as Parliamentary Election Nears

As the election campaign in Poland moves into its final week, Waclaw Wojciechowski, 42, has come to realize his greatest liability--he is a candidate of the PZPR, the Communist Party that has ruled Poland for the last 40 years.

As he and others here have discovered, this is such grim baggage for a Polish politician to haul about that the usual official symbols of the “worker’s party”--the red flags and the hammer and sickle--are nowhere to be found on poster or leaflet. Even the innocuous party initials, if present at all, are set in type discreet enough to strain the eyes.

“Yes,” Wojciechowski sighed, “these days belonging to the party is a certain handicap.”

Wojciechowski was out on the campaign trail Sunday, sitting quietly on the porch of the town cultural center in the not very lively hope that a few voters might seek him out for a discussion of the issues.

The voters, however, were mostly milling in the surrounding park, lining up to buy such rarities as chocolate cookies and panty hose, sold from the backs of trucks. These scarce commodities, along with an exhibition of folk dancing to provide a festive background, were all organized by the party’s coalition candidates to lure an electorate that is skeptical in the extreme.

“You must be joking,” answered one woman, standing in line to buy chocolates, when she was asked if she intended to vote for the party.

Her vote, in those races where she has a clear choice, will go to the candidates backed by Solidarity, which is participating for the first time in the most competitive elections to be held in Poland since World War II.

Indeed, as the campaign heads toward the first round of voting next Sunday, there is apprehension, even among Solidarity’s strategists, over the party’s apparently dismal support.

Open to All Comers

In the elections, 100 members of a newly created Senate will be chosen in a fully democratic vote, open to all comers, including the party and Solidarity, which has fielded candidates for all 100 races.

In addition, 420 members of the lower house, or Sejm, will also be chosen, but those seats have been apportioned already, with 65% to go to the party and its allies and 35% open to opposition candidates.

These proportions, hammered out in long negotiations between Solidarity and the government, will guarantee the Communists at least a slim majority in the National Assembly, even if Solidarity candidates were to win all 100 seats in the Senate.

Solidarity’s polls, in Warsaw, show its candidates winning in every contest for which it is eligible by margins of up to 7 to 1. Although the gap in rural areas is thought to be narrower, most political activists say that Solidarity has a clear edge in the countryside as well. It is possible, some observers now say, that Solidarity and its opposition allies could win 90 out of 100 seats in the Senate.

Party officials have become openly alarmed, charging that Solidarity’s candidates are violating the spirit of the round-table agreements reached in April, which provided the basis for the current “non-confrontational” elections. They charge that it is unfair for Solidarity to launch blanket attacks against official candidates, charging them with responsibility for 40 years of economic failure in Poland.

Moderate voices from both the official and opposition sides have voiced apprehension over the possibility that the party could be grossly embarrassed in the elections. Their misgivings stem from the fear that party hard-liners could launch a backlash against reforms if they see the threat against the party as immediate and final.

A Solidarity candidate for the Senate, longtime activist Jacek Kuron, is among those counseling for moderation. At a campaign appearance in Warsaw, he cautioned a questioner from the audience who called for a more aggressive and sweeping campaign against the Communists.

“I don’t think that is a good idea,” Kuron said. “I have studied revolutions, and I don’t think that is what we need here. Right now we have people standing in line for meat, but if we have a revolution, there will be no meat at all. What we want is an evolutionary rebuilding of the system with the cooperation of the Communists, because only the Communists can guarantee peaceful change. Perhaps we will be proved wrong, but there is no other way but to try.”

The government’s growing nervousness was evident when a Warsaw court recently refused to grant legal status to the independent students’ organization, NZS, a clear backtracking on the round-table agreements.

Sensing the grim mood in the party, Solidarity’s reaction was mild. Solidarity leader Lech Walesa issued a statement supporting the students, thereby ending occupation strikes on university campuses from Warsaw to Krakow.

Solidarity’s mild rhetoric is a clear reflection of both its popular and organizational strength. When the election campaign began three weeks ago, Solidarity strategists believed it had a clear disadvantage against a Communist organization that was already in place. But, within days, Solidarity supporters had collected hundreds of thousands of signatures to get their candidates placed on the ballots, and campaign offices sprang up in virtually every town in the country.

The contrast between Solidarity and party campaign offices is sharp.

Over the past weekend, the Communist coalition’s main office was deserted at 3 p.m. on Saturday afternoon except for a functionary sitting alone reading newspapers. At Solidarity headquarters, six blocks away, 30 to 40 persons were at work, bundling up leaflets for distribution, selling campaign buttons and posters and manning information booths for passers-by. Officials on duty were available for interviews. The mood, throughout, was festive.

Andrzej Urbanik, one of the volunteers on duty, was looking at the results of a new poll. It was only a small sample, 200 persons, but it showed Solidarity winning 65% to 70% of the choices, 3% to 5% for the party, with the rest undecided.

“We’re doing pretty well, I think,” Urbanik said. “Anyway, we’re having a good time.”