Solidarity Editor to Lead Poland, Breaking Communist Control

Solidarity editor Tadeusz Mazowiecki declared Friday that he is ready to accept President Wojciech Jaruzelski’s offer to nominate him as prime minister and break the Communist grip on power in Poland.

Mazowiecki, 62, a veteran opposition activist who spent a year in jail during Jaruzelski’s martial law crackdown of 1981, confirmed that he is the president’s choice to lead the next government.

“Our Premier!” the opposition newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza proclaimed triumphantly, if somewhat prematurely, in a headline above Mazowiecki’s smiling picture Friday.

Though the formal announcement had not been made Friday, the official PAP news agency was treating Mazowiecki, editor of the Solidarity union weekly Tygodnik Solidarnosc, as a major public figure. It reported throughout the day his meetings with dignitaries.

The appointment of a Solidarity-led government, the first non-Communist government in the Soviet Bloc since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin consolidated control of Eastern Europe in the late 1940s, would be an event of historic significance.

Local Communist Party chapters expressed dismay Friday, PAP reported. “We are firmly against forming a government as proposed by the opposition,” said a statement issued by the Wroclaw party chapter.

“We appeal to the Central Committee for a defense of socialist values,” said the Walbrzych chapter, according to PAP.

Mazowiecki, whose name is pronounced mah-zoh-vee-ET-skee, met Friday with party chief Mieczyslaw F. Rakowski to discuss government changes. Mazowiecki also met with Roman Catholic primate Cardinal Josep Glemp.

After meeting with Jaruzelski, Mazowiecki confirmed that he expected to be offered the post and would accept despite the “huge problems” he sees ahead.

“It won’t be easy,” he said, referring to Poland’s crippled economy, $39-billion foreign debt, food shortages and widespread public discontent.

“I think the most difficult task will be to make people think that it can be better--even though it cannot be better immediately--and make them believe that their work is not wasted,” he said at the National Assembly building.

Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, who deftly assembled the coalition of lawmakers that has apparently engineered a transfer of the government away from the Communist Party, proposed Mazowiecki to Jaruzelski at a meeting Thursday.

Three Candidates

Mazowiecki was one of three candidates offered by Walesa and his coalition partners, the United Peasant and Democratic parties, and according to Solidarity sources he was Walesa’s first choice.

In addition to being the first non-Communist premier, Mazowiecki would be the first practicing Catholic to head the government in this highly religious country since the war.

“I am afraid of many things,” Mazowiecki said. “But if I were only afraid, I would be a total pessimist. Somebody has to try it. I am a believer and I believe providence cares for us.”

He said the talk with Jaruzelski was “very fundamental, concerning all important topics.”

Concessions to Communists

Mindful of the Soviet Union’s strategic concerns, Solidarity has said it will grant the Communists the ministries of defense and interior, which oversee the army and police.

The Soviet government daily Izvestia on Friday said it is clear that Poland is headed for its first “non-Communist” government in decades.

Perhaps to reassure Soviets there would be some continuity, Izvestia also ran excerpts from an interview Walesa gave to West German TV in which he said Poland would remain in the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military alliance.

Although Moscow in recent days has expressed concern over the developments, Soviet foreign ministry officials have said that formation of the government is an internal Polish affair.

Influence Still Great

President Bush at this point is not considering expanding the $119 million economic aid package he has announced for Poland, said White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater.

Even with a non-Communist coalition in charge of the government, the Communist Party will continue to wield great influence.

Jaruzelski oversees military and foreign policy as president, and party members are scattered throughout the government and courts.

Solidarity Majority

Jaruzelski must nominate the prime minister for approval by the Sejm, the lower house of the National Assembly. Approval would seem assured because the Solidarity-led coalition forms a 264-member majority in the 460-member chamber.

Mazowiecki would be given a period of several weeks to assemble a Cabinet and present it to the Sejm for a vote.

Jaruzelski accepted the concept of a Solidarity-led government during a historic meeting with Walesa on Thursday. Walesa also offered two alternative candidates to Mazowiecki--Solidarity parliamentary leader Bronislaw Geremek and longtime activist Jacek Kuron.

Mazowiecki, 62, was the least publicly known of the three, but his ties to Solidarity date to the August, 1980, strikes in Gdansk that gave birth to the movement.

Was Jailed for a Year

A Catholic journalist trained as a lawyer, he was jailed for one year after the 1981 martial-law crackdown for his opposition to the government. Mazowiecki also was at Walesa’s side when nationwide strikes last year served as the catalyst for the government’s decision to open talks with the union, legalize it and allow opposition participation in elections.

Those elections resulted in Solidarity’s victory in virtually every race its candidates entered.

Before the union’s rise, Mazowiecki was active in independent Catholic circles. Mazowiecki was part of the ZNAK group that managed under church protection to serve as a focal point for thinking independent of communist ideology in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s. The group was allowed a token number of seats in Parliament and Mazowiecki held one from 1961 to 1971.

He was the editor of a Catholic monthly from 1958 until 1981 when he founded Tygodnik Solidarnosc. It was banned under martial law but resurrected by Mazowiecki this year after Solidarity was legalized.

By rejecting the office of prime minister, Walesa remains free to head the union. There is fear in the opposition that the coalition government might fail to satisfy social aspirations in the face of the country’s crushing economic problems and have to resign. Union advisers argued that Walesa should not risk his personal reputation.