Polish Communists Regain Allies, Name Premier

Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, Poland’s interior minister, was elected premier Wednesday as the Communist Party whipped its recalcitrant coalition partners into line to get the needed votes in the National Assembly.

The vote was 237 to 173, with 10 abstentions, indicating that most of the 76 members of the United Peasants’ Party, which on Tuesday had threatened to bolt the Communist coalition, voted for Kiszczak.

A career military officer and interior minister since 1981, Kiszczak, 62, headed the government delegation in the so-called round-table negotiations with Solidarity, the independent trade union movement, that led to the recent elections. He has been one of President Wojciech Jaruzelski’s chief allies in Jaruzelski’s reform effort.

Invitation to Solidarity

After his election Wednesday, Kiszczak (full name pronounced CHESS-wahff KEESH-chahk) repeated his invitation for Solidarity to join the government, noting “with regret” that Solidarity already had refused similar appeals from the Communist leadership.

Kiszczak said he “will not give up efforts to attract . . . representatives of the opposition circles, with hope that in the future a grand coalition government will be possible.” He asked for two weeks to assemble a government.

The turnaround by the Peasants’ Party deputies in the Sejm, the Assembly’s lower house, was a disappointment to some Solidarity firebrands who had envisioned a possible Solidarity-led government if the Communist allies had gone ahead with their defection.

But the relaxed attitude of most of Solidarity’s senior leadership suggested a sense of relief at having avoided what would have been a political crisis if the Communists had been forced to deal with the Soviet Bloc’s first non-Communist, opposition-led government.

The Peasants’ Party deputies apparently were brought around after a tense, closed-door meeting with the Communist parliamentary leadership Tuesday night. Communist Party leader Mieczyslaw F. Rakowski joined the session after a trip to the hospital earlier in the day. Aides said he had had a spell of dizziness.

It is not clear what form of persuasion Rakowski and other Communist leaders might have used at the meeting, but some sources suggested that the Peasants’ Party share of the nomenklatura --essentially patronage positions--and other material privileges of the alliance figured prominently in the discussions.

As a final threat, the Communists could have pointed out that Jaruzelski is empowered by the constitution to dissolve Parliament and call for new elections in the event of a deadlock over the choice of a government.

Appeared ‘Frightened’

“It looks like they were frightened,” said Jan Litynski, a Solidarity deputy who had said Tuesday, in the middle of the Peasants’ Party revolt, that the way had been cleared for the formation of a Solidarity government.

But the problems a Solidarity government would have had to face are now dropped in Kiszczak’s lap. Thus, Solidarity--which according to its moderate leaders is not prepared to run a government--will be able to observe the Communist government’s workings at close range and prepare for the future.

Most Solidarity activists, as well as many diplomatic observers, believe that the Kiszczak government will be an interim affair.

The new premier’s first and most urgent task is to do something about the economy. Food stores in Poland’s cities have been picked virtually clean, and many have closed as the government has frozen price supports for food.

On Tuesday, the government’s new “marketization” plan went into effect and meat prices rose by as much as 288%. Prices of such staples as flour, sugar and salt were up by about 50%.

Before choosing Kiszczak as premier, the National Assembly decided, by a vote of 206 to 169, to form a commission to investigate the previous government’s handling of the economy. That government, headed by Rakowski, now the Communist Party leader, has been criticized for allowing inflation to accelerate to the triple-digit level.

In his speech to the Assembly, Kiszczak asked the lawmakers to appoint a team of experts, with representatives from “all political groupings,” to help design an economic program with special emphasis on curbing inflation.

“We need a set of immediate steps for the coming months to halt the concrete danger of total economic and, consequently, even political destabilization,” Kiszczak said.

He said drastic measures will be required to ensure market supplies, particularly supplies of food. These measures, he said, likely would include curbs on state investment and reduced exports of cattle.

“It is possible,” he said, “to make considerable budget savings . . . in the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry for Internal Affairs.”