Polish Leader Quits in Wake of Election Loss

In the wake of a crushing third-place finish in Poland’s presidential elections, Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and his government resigned Monday as many of his supporters bemoaned a lack of sophistication among the country’s voters and argued that Mazowiecki’s defeat represented a dangerous moment for the country’s fledgling democracy.

In a result that staggered Poland’s political Establishment, the leading vote-getter, Solidarity Chairman Lech Walesa, will advance to the runoff election with a near-unknown, Canadian businessman Stanislaw Tyminski, as his opponent.

It was a scathing rebuke of Mazowiecki, who for the last year has led Poland’s first non-Communist government in the postwar era, steering it on a path of difficult economic reform.

“It is impossible for me to remain the prime minister,” Mazowiecki said in an interview with state radio. “I said very clearly that in the event that I am not elected, I will immediately announce the resignation of the government.”

Walesa, told the news at his home in Gdansk, responded bitterly: “That’s great responsibility,” he thundered. “Now let the Poles see this responsibility, this patriotism, this democracy of Mazowiecki!”

Apparently, Poland will be effectively without a government until the new president--Walesa or Tyminski--is elected in the runoff election Dec. 9 and his appointment of a new prime minister is approved by Parliament.

President Wojciech Jaruzelski, the army general who once headed the Polish Communist Party, remains head of state until the new president is sworn in.

Mazowiecki, who as recently as August held a commanding lead in all the public opinion polls, finished dismally in the official tally with 18% of the vote, well behind Tyminski’s 23%.

Walesa, who polled 39%, remains the favorite in the runoff election, but the turnout for Tyminski represented a splash of cold water, even for him.

At his Gdansk headquarters, Walesa dismissed Tyminski as not a “serious man” but characterized the vote as a “lesson in democracy.” Although Walesa said he was hesitant about fighting it out in the second round, he noted that “it wouldn’t be proper to leave it now.”

Mazowiecki and his government ministers met from before noon until late in the afternoon, debating whether or not to resign immediately or wait until after the runoff. Before the first round, Mazowiecki had said he would move into the political opposition if he lost.

His comments in the radio interview reflected the bitterness that spread rapidly Sunday night among his closest supporters, who reacted with disbelief when the first vote projections were announced. Mazowiecki said he could not be “responsible for promises made by the other candidates. They must now be responsible for what they have been promising.”

Walesa’s assessment of the result as a warning to politicians seemed far more acute than the readings coming from the Mazowiecki camp, humiliated by the spectacle of an outsider--a Polish emigre with business operations in Canada and Peru, a curious history and an uncertain program--delivering the government such a slap in the face.

Newspaper editor Ernest Skalski, a Mazowiecki supporter, said he expects Walesa to win on the second round but added, “The very fact that he (Tyminski) got to the second round is a shameful episode in our political history.”

Similar assessments echoed widely among Mazowiecki supporters, who argued that Poland had embarrassed itself in the eyes of the world with a vote that had come from the most unsophisticated elements of Polish society.

“I make a comparison to the faith people have in frauds by pseudo-medical swindlers and others,” said Dr. Zofia Kuratowska, a Mazowiecki supporter and deputy Speaker of the Polish Senate. “People trust them, and not the real medicine.”

A buoyant Tyminski declared himself unafraid of Walesa as an opponent. “I want to make this country rich and prosperous,” he said. If he is elected, he said, conditions in Poland “will be better within a month.”

Some Mazowiecki supporters charged that Walesa did too little to discourage the anti-Semitism of a small fraction of his supporters, who spread rumors that the devoutly Roman Catholic Mazowiecki was Jewish or that Jews dominated his government. Walesa condemned anti-Semitism and said he would not permit it in his government, but accusations persistsed that he did not speak out forcefully enough. It was difficult to tell what effect, if any, the issue had on the vote.

Exit polls showed that Tyminski ran strongest in the countryside, in small towns, among factory workers and voters under the age of 25. Commentators on Monday were singling out these groups--particularly the small-town and rural vote--as the voice of a “second Poland,” which saw in Tyminski a man “who arrived ‘clean,’ ” in the words of one, “from outside the situation . . . from the world of success, from the Americas, and who does not belong to the world of politics.”

While most of this analysis seemed designed to salve the government’s wounded supporters, it disregarded one of the government’s signal weaknesses--its inability to communicate and sell its program to sections of the voting public who are being forced to carry the heaviest burdens of economic reform and who see changes as coming far too slowly.

In the country village of Jadow, 70 miles east of Warsaw, the disenchantment felt by many voters was probably typical for many such towns across the country.

In Jadow, nothing much has changed in the year since the Communists were routed from power. A new village leader sits in the town office, but business proceeds much as before--slowly. The handful of telephones in town work poorly, if at all. The public park is full of weeds and broken benches. After dark, the only light comes from the dreary town bar.

“He’s interesting, this Tyminski,” said Kazimierz Gawor, 68, the owner of a small farm at the edge of town. “Maybe he knows how to work, to make money. These days, people don’t want to work any more.”

People also spoke of their sense of “disconnection” from Warsaw and its political elites, where such figures as the government’s spokeswoman, Malgorzata Niezabitowska, blithely spoke of the need for small Polish farmers to go bankrupt, in the name of economic reform. “It doesn’t matter what happens to us out here,” said Eugenigsz Powierza, a relatively well-off Jadow farmer. “We’re not considered important.”

Powierza was a Walesa supporter (“he got rid of the Communists”), and his disaffection with the government was typical. Mazowiecki, in such towns as Jadow, picked up only 10% of the vote. In some villages, according to unofficial returns, he was shut out altogether.

Walesa, early in the campaign, recognized the gulf between the government and the governed, saying that too much of Polish society had reverted, as in the Communist years, to regarding the government as a remote and essentially patronizing force--once again a contest between “them and us.”

Mazowiecki, a reluctant campaigner pushed into a race he appeared to find painful, did not help. Neither on the stump or as prime minister was he able to find the comfortable approach and comforting words that might have suggested to a worried nation that, as hard as things were, they would get better, that hope was just over the horizon. Instead, he asked voters merely to have patience and stay with him. His supporters credited him with intellectual honesty, but many voters took their cue from the expression on his face, which suggested a long, slow grind ahead.

For 83% of the Polish voting public, this was simply not good enough. Rather than a setback for Polish democracy, the vote, to some, may be viewed as a timely refresher course for politicians on the basics of the system--that losing touch with voters translates finally into lost votes.

The message of the vote further suggests that most Poles want both a more positive (or less fearful) approach and one that does not treat them as though they are unworthy of discussion, consultation and participation. It also suggests that success and public adoration do not automatically fall to those who follow the Communists into power, simply because they were longtime opponents of the Communist system.

This last lesson is not likely to be lost on Walesa, viewed as the nation’s foremost opponent of the Communists. He indicated Monday that he appreciated the discontent the vote for Tyminski represented.

“With Tyminski’s example,” Walesa said at a press conference at his headquarters in Gdansk, “we are having an accelerated lesson in democracy. We are now learning our own mistakes.”