Walesa Is Forced Into a Runoff : Poland: Dark-horse candidate Tyminski apparently finishes second, outpolling prime minister. A showdown vote will be held Dec. 9.

An outsider in the Polish presidential sweepstakes jolted the political leadership here Sunday by outpolling the prime minister to finish in second place and throw the election into a second round Dec. 9, exit polls indicated.

Dark-horse candidate Stanislaw Tyminski, a 42-year-old self-made millionaire who left Poland in 1970, living most of that time in Canada, had a projected 23.2% of the vote. His total was well behind that of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, the favorite in the race, who won 39.3%--well short of the 50% total required to win the office outright in the first round of voting.

In the first free presidential election in 45 years, Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki’s total was projected at 19.9% of the vote, a sharp rejection for the dogged, gloomy-faced intellectual who has guided the Polish government since August, 1989, setting the country on a difficult course of economic reform.

The unofficial projections, announced on Polish television moments after the polls closed, were made by the government polling agency working with a German polling firm with wide experience in European elections.

The results were quickly read by political operatives as an indication of the disenchantment of the electorate, which expects even more economic uncertainty in the coming year.

“Tyminski means for me a no-confidence vote for political parties,” said one election night analyst on television. “It is a vote for a man who is a professional, but not a professional politician.”

Tyminski is an enigma in Polish politics. He left Poland nearly 21 years ago for Canada and spent nine years in Peru. A businessman who made his fortune in computer and electronics equipment, Tyminski recently returned to Warsaw with his Peruvian wife and attracted Poles with his promise of quick profits for those who work hard despite the depressed economy.

Agreement was general that Walesa would beat Tyminski handily in the runoff.

But there was a notable lack of jubilation at Walesa headquarters in Gdansk, where aides of the fiery Solidarity leader had expected an outright, first-round victory despite pre-election samplings suggesting that Tyminski was running in second place ahead of Mazowiecki.

“I think people will come to their senses,” said one Polish journalist. “In the end, Poland is not going to elect someone no one has ever heard of for its president.”

“We have a crisis of trust, a crisis of authority . . . that is so deep that the public is ready to vote for someone who comes from nowhere,” said Krzystof Krol, a manager for one of the minor parties in the election, whose strongly nationalistic candidate won only 2% of the vote.

Tyminski campaigned actively in the election, arguing that his business acumen equipped him to tackle the economic problems faced by the country. He brashly attacked Mazowiecki as a “traitor” to Poland because of economic policies that, he said, were leading the country into chaos and poverty.

He also capitalized on his image as an outsider who was free from past entanglements either with the Communists or with Solidarity, whose noisy split appeared to have left many voters disenchanted.

Walesa and Mazowiecki, old allies under Solidarity, divided the Solidarity rank and file between them, often bitterly.

Walesa charged that the Mazowiecki government was moving too slowly to privatize the economy and to remove the old Communist holdovers from positions in government and industry. He argued that the public had begun to feel, as they had under the Communists, a “them-versus-us” division between the people and the government.

Mazowiecki countered that Walesa was a “destabilizing” force and that change must come carefully. Mazowiecki’s backers accused Walesa of acting purely out of his ambition to win the presidency.

The exit polls Sunday indicated that Tyminski did especially well among voters between the ages of 18 and 25, attracting nearly 30% of the votes of that sector. Only Walesa, with 32%, did better among the youngest voters.

Tyminski also did well in the countryside and in towns under 10,000 population, scoring about 27% of the vote in those areas. He did poorest in the large cities--Warsaw, Gdansk, Krakow and Lodz--where he drew less than 10% of the vote.

The conclusion drawn by many political observers was that Tyminski did well among the least-sophisticated voters in the country.

Mazowiecki, whose government’s agricultural policy has been under bitter attack from farmers, was virtually deserted by voters in the rural areas, carrying only 4% there.

Walesa, leader of the Solidarity movement that toppled communism last year and a national hero, made no election night appearance. An aide, Jacek Merkel, said that Walesa “is very serious about the second round of the election and will not make any premature comments about his opponent.” He said the results of the vote point up Walesa’s strong standing in Polish politics.

Mazowiecki turned up briefly at his Warsaw headquarters but said he would wait for the official results to make a statement. “These first results,” he added, “are a sign of the sense of crisis in the country.”

Tyminski, appearing at his headquarters to thank his campaign workers, said he hopes to have a chance to debate Walesa before next month’s runoff election. “I have asked for this before,” he said, “but no one was interested.”

In Chicago, a Polish consular official said Sunday that Walesa drew 60% of about 30,000 votes cast by Poles in North America on Saturday. Polish emigres were invited to vote in several U.S. and Canadian cities, including Los Angeles.

Mazowiecki got 33% of the North American vote, with the remainder scattered among the other candidates.