Walesa Wants Top Job : Solidarity Chief’s Aim: Presidency

Lech Walesa said today that he will run for the office of Polish president and a top aide said the Solidarity leader was ready to force President Wojciech Jaruzelski to resign.

Asked by the official news agency PAP to comment on a weekend statement by one of his senior collaborators that he wanted to replace Jaruzelski soon, Walesa said: “I confirm.”

He did not elaborate, but said: “We have a lot of wise and valuable people in the government and other positions but one has to speed up the pace of reforms and remove the old set-up.”

Earlier, Walesa’s chief of staff, Krzysztof Pusz, said Walesa was ready to force Jaruzelski to resign and take over the presidency himself.

Pusz, chief of Walesa’s secretariat, told reporters that Walesa should become president soon because Jaruzelski was doing nothing to speed up reforms at home or win help for Poland from abroad.

“Everything is going too slowly. We just need someone with a whip,” he said.

Pusz said Walesa should first win reelection as chairman of Solidarity when the union holds its first national congress since 1981 in Gdansk next week.

“Then he has to be chairman for a month or two. Perhaps it won’t be two months. It depends on the situation. There may be a possibility that Jaruzelski will resign himself,” Pusz said.

Pusz is Walesa’s closest collaborator in day-to-day affairs and never speaks out to journalists without the Solidarity leader’s authorization.

Asked if he expected Jaruzelski, a longtime communist, to make way for Walesa, Pusz replied: “Yes, either resignation or force him to resign. One of the two.”

Walesa’s advisers wanted him to take over quickly but were divided about whether he should wait until fully democratic parliamentary elections, expected before May, 1991.

“I think he should run and as soon as possible and not wait for parliamentary elections,” Pusz said.

Jaruzelski was elected last July by Parliament to act as a stabilizing influence during Poland’s trailblazing transition from communism to democracy.

But the democratic revolution sweeping Eastern Europe has since speeded up and he is now one of the last senior members of the former Communist Establishment still in office in the region.

Pusz was the second top Walesa collaborator in a few days to say the Solidarity leader should replace Jaruzelski quickly.

Sen. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, editor of the Solidarity weekly Tygodnik Solidarnosc, said last weekend Walesa should take over to invigorate the Solidarity-led government and speed up Poland’s transition to full democracy.

Pusz’s remarks followed reports from Solidarity sources that Jaruzelski was having second thoughts about resigning after expressing readiness in January to do so. “We need someone who would be able to get something for Poland. Walesa would travel, arrange things, and at home he would get things moving,” Pusz said.