NEWS ANALYSIS : Drive Against Walesa Stalls; Now Even Detractors Expect He’ll Become President : Poland: His stock rises with victories in labor disputes and fears of a fratricidal split in Solidarity.

Last weekend, for the second time in three weeks, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa settled a troublesome labor dispute, calming the tempers of disgruntled farmers who blockaded roads north of Warsaw and shut down a dozen dairies in northern Poland.

As with the railway workers who went on strike in early June, the farmers agreed, after talking with Walesa, to “take into account the higher good”--in this case to go back to work pending discussions with the government about their demands for higher milk prices.

But while Walesa was once again demonstrating his familiar persuasiveness with Poland’s economically squeezed working classes, the volatile Solidarity leader was also savoring a far more significant victory. At least for the moment, he overcame a clear effort to block his way to the Polish presidency, a post he hopes to assume early next year.

While there was no distinct ringleader for the anti-Walesa drive, it was centered among the liberal, intellectual core of Solidarity activists, mainly in and around the government in Warsaw, who began a quiet campaign about three months ago by raising questions about Walesa’s suitability for the presidency.

The move appears to have stalled, partly because of Walesa’s stubborn resistance to backing down and partly because of fears that a fratricidal split in Solidarity would still leave him with a huge reservoir of public support from his decade as the unchallenged leader of Poland’s opposition to the Communists.

Continued jousting over the character of Solidarity’s political base in a nationwide network of citizens committees may go on in the coming months, but observers say that Walesa’s eventual assumption of the presidency has been generally accepted, even by those who originally questioned his qualifications.

Curious peripheral issues were raised in the controversy, with press commentaries referring to Walesa as a “painted bird,” a man who speaks ungrammatical Polish and lacks sufficient dignity for the job of president.

Some said Walesa was too “unpredictable” for the post, and others complained of his “autocratic” nature, comparing him with Jozef Pilsudski, the dictatorial leader of Poland between the two world wars who ousted an elected government in a military coup.

The dispute was fueled further by Walesa’s strange position in Polish affairs: the leader of a trade union with no official government position, but with a powerful political voice. In apparent frustration with that role, he has sniped steadily at the government for moving too slowly in some areas and for its failure, as he sees it, to galvanize public support for further political and economic changes.

The presidency is now held by former Communist Party leader Wojciech Jaruzelski, regarded in all political quarters as a transitional figure. Jaruzelski has said he is willing to retire by the time new parliamentary elections are held, probably next spring.

At first, the dispute between the Warsaw intellectuals and the Walesa camp seemed a minor issue, but it quickly turned acrimonious, reaching such intensity that it even moved the Polish American Congress to issue a statement June 15 expressing its distress at what it called “a major threat to the Polish people’s national interest.”

At its height, Warsaw intellectuals were laying plans to persuade Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki--a Solidarity stalwart hand-picked by Walesa to lead the Polish government--to oppose Walesa for the presidency, virtually assuring a bitter fight that would have torn the movement down the middle.

At the same time, an equally combative Walesa made it clear that he is not backing off from the fight, arguing that “war at the top”--that is, among political leaders--is preferable to “war from the bottom”--a rebellious and disillusioned public.

At the peak of the fight, he fired off messages from the Solidarity union headquarters in Gdansk, dismissing one longtime activist, Henryk Wujec, from his job in Warsaw as head of Solidarity’s grass-roots citizens committee organization.

Another message purportedly dismissed, or threatened to dismiss--the facts remain ambiguous--another longtime ally, Adam Michnik, from his post as head of the Solidarity daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza.

Both Wujec and Michnik are still on the job, and now seem likely to remain. According to Walesa’s allies, the paper, following Walesa’s rocket from Gdansk, has taken “a more objective line” in its commentaries and coverage of the Solidarity leader.

And a meeting of Solidarity’s leading intellectual lights, held June 10 in Krakow, failed to generate sufficient steam to form an “initiative” for what was called a “civic movement”--in effect, a forceful liberal wing of Solidarity that would provide strong backing for the government and, most likely, opposition against Walesa.

“What basically happened in Krakow,” said Marcin Krol, the editor of the respected intellectual monthly Res Publica, “is that the group simply could not get the signatures it needed. So what is happening now is an effort at quiet accommodation, an effort to calm things down.”

Specifically, the Krakow meeting failed to get the support of several key figures in the Solidarity establishment, including Bronislaw Geremek, the history professor who leads the Solidarity parliamentary group; Jacek Kuron, the veteran activist who heads the Ministry of Labor; or even Michnik, whose newspaper had appeared to be leading the anti-Walesa charge. (Prime Minister Mazowiecki has remained steadfastly above the fray.)

According to some observers, the failure of the Krakow initiative brought a recognition that, while there are restive elements on both ends of the liberal-conservative spectrum within Solidarity, Walesa remains as a sort of “supernova” of Polish politics.