Seem Stunned by Support for Solidarity : Communists Gloomy on Eve of Polish Vote

It is rush hour in the Polish capital. Pulawska Street, through the southern district of the city, is jammed with cars and shoppers buying weekend provisions. Along the street, amid the stores, newsstands and vegetable kiosks, are campaign offices for all the political parties competing in today’s national elections in Poland.

Even a quick look at them suggests ample explanation for the air of gloom and desperation that has descended on Poland’s ruling Communist authorities and their allies. Their offices, at the very climax of the campaign, are virtually empty--some of them actually locked and deserted by 3 p.m.

Solidarity’s little neighborhood office on Pulawska Street, by contrast, looks like a student strike headquarters at Berkeley, circa 1970. Telephones are ringing, operatives are dashing about clutching sheaths of paper. Volunteers are counting fistfuls of money--campaign contributions, receipts from the sale of buttons and posters.

A list of election day personnel assignments for 132 Warsaw polling places is taped to a wall. The atmosphere is heavy with smoke and sweat, shouted commands and the adrenal surge of impending battle.

80% Voter Turnout Expected

It is expected that 80% of Poland’s 27 million eligible voters will respond to that air of excitement today by lining up to mark the complicated ballots in the first genuinely open elections in Eastern Europe since the immediate post-World War II period.

At stake are 100 seats in a newly revived Senate, in which all seats are open to both candidates from the Solidarity-backed opposition and a coalition led by the Communists.

A 460-member Sejm, or Parliament, will also be elected, with 35%--or 161--of the seats open to candidates from the opposition and 65% reserved for the Communist coalition. In addition, a so-called “national list” of 35 top Communist figures (predominantly members of the present government) will be running unopposed.

The ballots are long and difficult to read. Thirty-two candidates, for example, are listed on the Senate ballot for Warsaw, and voters have been instructed to cross off the names of the candidates they do not want and to leave the names of those they support.

The process is complicated further by the fact that party affiliations are not listed on the actual ballots. To win outright, a candidate must receive more than 50% of the vote; if none does, the two leading vote-getters will participate in a runoff election June 18.

Solidarity’s leader, Lech Walesa, is not a candidate, but, as the nation’s most admired political figure (according to a recent survey taken by the state’s official polling agency), he has been a potent force as a campaigner for the Solidarity side.

In a final taped television message before the vote, Walesa alluded to the government’s open concern over the outcome of the election.

“We are running very aggressively and proposing clear solutions,” Walesa said. “A lot of people with other political concepts have not seen such a thing before, and they are scared.”

Indeed, the Communist coalition has appeared stunned to the point of paralysis by the tide of open support for Solidarity.

The Communists’ only memorable campaign slogan has been, “Vote for us; you know our faults.” On Friday, the coalition’s campaign chairman proposed an early end to the campaigning, a suggestion Solidarity quickly rejected.

Solidarity’s own polls show its candidates winning by margins of nearly 70%, with about 10% going to the Communist coalition and the rest undecided. Some observers see Solidarity candidates winning at least 70 seats in the Senate. Some say Solidarity could win as many as 90 seats.

In addition, the government in the last week has sensed a crisis building over the election of the 35 candidates from its national list. The election rules specify that even these unopposed candidates have to receive more than 50% of the vote in order to gain seats in the Parliament.

Voters’ Delight

The government openly acknowledges that it overlooked the possibility that Polish voters would delight in crossing Communists off the ballot.

The Solidarity leadership, which had first suggested crossing off all non-Solidarity candidates, has backpedalled slightly, with its leading candidate suggesting that the national list represents the liberal wing of the party and their defeat could lead to a hard line backlash.

“A push for a crushing victory is not a good road,” said the Communist Party leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, in a television speech Friday night, characterizing the elections as a continuation of the “spirit of compromise” reached in the government-Solidarity “round table” negotiations in April.

“We should not play with fire,” said Jaruzelski, who is expected to be elected president by the new national assembly. “Choosing the road of hostility, tension and upheavals would be deadly to Poland.”

The important figures who could be stricken off the national list include Premier Mieczyslaw F. Rakowski and the interior minister, Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, who led the government negotiations with Solidarity. Although neither would be forced to resign their government posts, their failure to win their unopposed seats would be a significant embarrassment to the authorities.

Little attention has been paid to detailed issues in the campaign, whose principal feature has been the spirited return to the scene of the once-outlawed Solidarity.

Whatever the outcome of the voting, Solidarity faces serious risks in the coming months, as it in effect joins the government and thereby shoulders at least a portion of the responsibility for the nation’s continuing crisis of rising prices, consumer shortages and a crippling foreign debt of $39 billion.

A further round of sharp price increases is expected in July, and the threat of strikes, always present in Poland, could challenge Walesa’s ability to calm the union’s militant wing.

Still, the fact that elections are being held today represents a major triumph for the vision of Walesa, who decided last August, when many key advisers were against it, to consider opening negotiations with the government.

The resulting bargain puts Poland at the leading edge of Communist reform in Europe, closely followed by Hungary. If the bargain can hold, the pact between Solidarity and the authorities calls for fully democratic elections here in four years, which could spell the end of Communist rule in Poland.