Polish Communist Party Concedes Defeat After Solidarity Sweeps Free Elections

The Communist Party conceded defeat today in the country’s first free parliamentary elections in four decades, saying Solidarity won a landslide and top party reformers were voted out of office.

“Solidarity got an overwhelming majority,” Communist Party spokesman Jan Bisztyga said in a statement on the nationally televised evening news program. “The result must be that the opposition must take co-responsibility for the state.”

The official news agency PAP said Solidarity candidates won up to 80% of the vote against government candidates.

Despite the resounding defeat, “We shall not retreat from the road of democracy and reforms,” Bisztyga said.

He warned that a feeling of excessive triumph and adventurism among Poles “might lead to a situation of anarchy in Poland, then democracy and social peace will be jeopardized.”

Solidarity spokesman Janusz Onyszkiewicz said all 161 Solidarity candidates for the Sejm, or lower chamber of Parliament, got more than 50% of the votes to qualify for their seats outright, but several running for the Senate missed the 50% cutoff and will take part in a runoff election June 18.

“Poland is marching on the road of reforms--in contrast to what has happened in China,” Onyszkiewicz said, referring to the army massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing. “I hope force will never be used in Poland to solve our internal problems.”

Under an agreement with Solidarity, the Communist Party was to receive 65% of the Sejm. To achieve that, some Communist Party candidates ran unopposed, but the party’s results indicated that some of them did not get the 50% voter approval required to be elected.

It was not immediately clear what would happen to any Sejm seats not filled in the election. Solidarity argued that they should be left vacant, but the government left open the possibility of another election for just those seats.

Jerzy Urban, the government’s point man during its repression of Solidarity from 1981 until two months ago, got 17.5% of the vote in his bid for the Sejm while his rival, Solidarity’s Andrzej Lapicki, scored 75%, preliminary figures showed.

Prominent Solidarity adviser Jacek Kuron, a frequent target of government attacks until recently, got 66% in his race.