Poland Presidential Candidate Is Assailed : Politics: “We are beginning to see the figure of an insane person,” a newspaper says of Stanislaw Tyminski.

An emigre businessman who soared into contention in Poland’s presidential race struggled today to keep his campaign afloat as the government threatened him with prosecution and newspapers called him a madman and a fraud.

Stanislaw Tyminski defiantly repeated his accusation that Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki had betrayed the country by selling Poland’s best companies to foreigners at bargain-basement prices.

But Tyminski, who made a $5-million fortune in Canada and Peru, has been attacked by opponents who question his business record, campaign promises and even his sanity.

“From what he says and how he says it, we are beginning to see the figure of an insane person, with a mixture of megalomania and a dangerous, though grotesque, persecution complex,” the pro-Mazowiecki newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza said.

Tyminski, whose vision to free Poland from economic slavery has caught the imagination of many voters, has thrown the presidential election campaign into turmoil.

Unknown a month ago, he soared in the opinion polls to within striking distance of Mazowiecki and threatened to snatch second place in Sunday’s first ballot behind Solidarity leader Lech Walesa.

But Tyminski failed at a news conference to substantiate his allegations against Mazowiecki, which prompted prosecutors on Monday to start investigating him for slander.

With five days left before the vote, it was unclear whether the attacks against him would destroy Tyminski’s campaign or win even more people to vote for him out of sympathy.

Though short on charisma, the quiet, bespectacled Tyminski has impressed many with his apparent business acumen and almost prophetic vision of future prosperity for Poland.

Tyminski calls the Solidarity government’s austerity policies “a mechanism of enslavement of our country.” He tells audiences across the country that Poland is a victim of international economic warfare that threatens to make it a nation of “white slaves.”

Voters applaud enthusiastically as Tyminski tells them Poles could make billions of dollars if freed from an oppressive tax system that throttles initiative and success.