POLAND / SOLIDARITY DIVIDED : Campaign for Presidency a Sharp Contrast in Styles : While Walesa is charging about pressing the flesh, Mazowiecki, characterized as ‘gray upon gray,’ seems the reluctant candidate.

Lech Walesa hits the presidential campaign trail in Poland in a new gray double-breasted suit, full of confidence and a spirit of combat, running like a candidate who likes nothing better than pressing the flesh and the roar of the crowd.

Meanwhile, his opponent, Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Walesa’s longtime adviser and erstwhile ally, goes out to ask for votes in the manner of an obligatory mourner at a funeral, a task performed more out of duty than commitment.

These are the dominant styles in Eastern Europe’s first post-Communist, fully free and “normalized” presidential campaign--that is, the first time that voters in Eastern Europe will choose directly between two non-Communist personalities to guide their nation’s destiny for the coming five years.

The campaign for the Nov. 25 election has been generally low-key so far, in effect scaling down the bitter rhetoric that issued from each candidate’s camp before the official campaign began.

Despite Walesa’s air of assurance, most polls have shown him trailing Mazowiecki, although there are signs that the tide may have turned in his favor.

The first poll showing him ahead, issued by an agency linked to state television, gave Walesa 33% to Mazowiecki’s 26%. The government’s polling agency, in a survey conducted a week earlier, showed the split to be 43% to 33% in Mazowiecki’s favor. Both polls showed over 20% undecided, perhaps suggesting the difficulty of the choice for many Polish voters.

Four other candidates are in the race, but none is thought to have a serious chance to win.

The battle between Walesa and Mazowiecki has torn apart the old Solidarity political movement (as distinct from the trade union, which Walesa still heads), dividing it into a center-right camp behind Walesa and a liberal social democratic wing behind Mazowiecki. Mazowiecki, in general, has attracted the intellectual corps that spent years giving Walesa advice.

In the rough-and-tumble, however, the labels may mean little. Walesa, 47, has promised to “accelerate” the process of change in Poland, charging that the Mazowiecki government has moved too slowly to remove former Communist officials, especially from industrial enterprises, charging that “there is too little democracy.”

Walesa makes his pitch with the energy and, some say, the arrogance that has been familiar to Poles since he burst on the scene as head of Solidarity when the union was founded in 1980. His first television message to voters was typical: “I did not want to be first,” Walesa said, “but once again, fate puts me forward as first. I demand, ask, beg: Join in if you want to be better, join in representing, in governing.”

By contrast, Mazowiecki, 63, is “gray upon gray,” in the description of one newspaper. His aides openly acknowledge that their chief hates campaigning and does it poorly.

On the same evening that candidates made their appeals to the television audience, Mazowiecki’s taped message showed him playing badminton at his country retreat and stiffly hugging his grandchildren.

“People say I smile too little,” he says in a taped message. “I could never fake smiles.”

Mazowiecki’s supporters are trying to emphasize his calm approach and steady hand, suggesting that Walesa is excitable, populist, unpredictable and dictatorial. Some of them suggest that a vote for Walesa is a vote for unsavory nationalistic tendencies, including anti-Semitism.

Walesa has dismissed the veiled charges as “provocations.”

Beyond his pledge to provide “acceleration,” Walesa has not spelled out a detailed program. Indeed, he has hinted he would keep much of the government’s team intact, including Leszek Balcerowicz, Mazowiecki’s finance minister and the man widely credited with Poland’s generally successful economic reform plan.