Walesa Preparing Bid for Poland’s Presidency : Politics: The Solidarity leader, unhappy in offstage role, hopes to oust Jaruzelski and speed reform.

Lech Walesa, obviously chafing under the burdens of his curiously offstage role in Polish politics, publicly acknowledged Tuesday what his advisers have known for months--he is ready to make his bid for the presidency of Poland.

The word came from one of his top operatives in Warsaw, who told the local newspaper that Walesa is prepared to challenge Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the incumbent, by pressuring him to resign or by backing constitutional changes that would bring new national elections.

“I confirm (it),” said Walesa, responding to queries from the official news agency PAP about the aide’s newspaper interview. “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 setup.”

The first public word that the Solidarity leader might be interested in acquiring the presidency soon came over the weekend from Sen. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, editor of the weekly Tygodnik Solidarity. He said Walesa should take over the job to invigorate the Solidarity-led government and speed up Poland’s transition to full democracy.

Then, on Tuesday, before Walesa himself confirmed the talk, his chief of staff, Krzysztof Pusz, said a quick change is needed because Jaruzelski is doing nothing to speed reforms at home or to win help for Poland from abroad.

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

“Jaruzelski is very inactive. Nobody receives him. So what can he do for Poland?” he asked. “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.”

Commenting to PAP, Walesa said Tuesday: “The Kaczynskis (Jaroslaw and his brother Lech) did me a bad turn by talking too soon, and I could lose because of that.

“But what’s to be done? The press is free,” he added.

Pusz suggested that Walesa would run for 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 told the British news agency Reuters.

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

Jaruzelski officially is serving a six-year term that ends in 1995.

Walesa was the first European dissident leader to push Communists from power in the Soviet Bloc. He led the wave of reform that swept Eastern Europe last year, paving the way for East Germans and Czechoslovaks to shed the Stalinist governments that had so long dominated them.

But now, while he himself holds no official position in the Polish government, he has seen opposition movement leaders in those other countries--most notably, Vaclav Havel, the former dissident who is now president of Czechoslovakia--basking in the international limelight.

Jaruzelski was elected last July by Parliament when he was seen as providing both continuity for the transition from communism to democracy and insurance from interference by the Soviet Union at a time when it was still not clear how much change the Kremlin could accept.

But in the months that followed, a dramatic series of revolutions swept the former Soviet Bloc countries, and it quickly became evident that the Soviet Union would not intervene to stop the tidal wave of change.

Now Poland is one of the last of the old East Bloc countries still to be headed, at least nominally, by a member of the former Communist establishment.

Walesa’s irritation with his lack of clout and drawing power has been evident to most Poles, particularly those close to the Solidarity hierarchy, and it set the stage for the kind of political confrontation that the Solidarity leader relishes.

He is almost sure to win, however he chooses to go about it. Most Poles regard him as the country’s true political leader and, by contrast, see Jaruzelski not as a vital transitional figure but as history’s mistake.

But Jaruzelski, according to even the most rock-ribbed Solidarity activists, has acquitted himself admirably as president since the Solidarity-led government of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki came to power last August.

His most devout wish, according to both his supporters and opponents, has been to hang on long enough in the presidency to go down in Polish history as a facilitator of change, rather than the architect of the 1981 martial law decree and the legal banning of Solidarity.

Even dedicated Jaruzelski haters--and there are many in Poland--credit the 66-year-old career military officer with an impeccable performance as president. He helped to lead the fight for Polish participation in the conferences involving German unification, a hot topic in Poland. He has given his full support to all the programs initiated by Mazowiecki.

As Bronislaw Geremek, the Solidarity parliamentary leader, said of him in a recent interview, “He has been an exemplary president.”

Walesa, however, has been relegated to an unaccustomed subordinate role. His minor differences with Mazowiecki, his handpicked choice for prime minister, have been accentuated. He has criticized Mazowiecki’s government for not implementing reforms and replacing the current bureaucracy fast enough.