Exotic Past Called Key to Tyminski’s Polish Support : Election: Backers point to his record abroad and say the country can use such a risk-taker at the helm.

If there’s one thing that angers Canadian supporters of Polish presidential candidate Stanislaw Tyminski, it’s when people call their pick “the man from nowhere.”

“The question is, is he coming from nowhere?” argues Robert Spanski, a Polish-Canadian businessman who is flying to Warsaw this week to help with the Tyminski campaign. “He’s coming from Canada. He’s financially independent. He’s a citizen of Peru. He’s a man with a proven record.”

On Sunday, Tyminski amazed international observers by placing second in the first round of Poland’s presidential election, beating out the Polish prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki.

Until August, Tyminski had been running a small but successful computer business in obscurity in the Toronto suburbs, unknown even to Polish-Canadian political and cultural leaders. He had flown to Warsaw only in September, on what he had told associates would be a one-week business trip. But instead of coming home at the end of the week, he threw his hat into the ring. On Dec. 9, he will face Polish Solidarity hero Lech Walesa in a runoff election.

The “proven record” cited by his supporters is a strange one, and Tyminski’s background is filled with surprises. Some of his varied experiences shed light on the kind of man he is and the kind of man he might be if, against all odds, he should become the next president of Poland. Those who know him argue that his exotic past has made him into precisely the kind of risk-taker that Poland can use.

“He realizes that he is here for a reason,” says Spanski. “He is inventing the future.”

Canadian acquaintances say Tyminski, 42, grew up on a collective farm outside Warsaw but emigrated here in 1969 after becoming disillusioned about Poland’s future under communism. He married a Finnish woman, fathered a son, studied computer science and, in 1974, went into business packaging computer systems for heavy industry. His firm, Transduction Ltd., built an impressive clientele, including the mighty provincial electric utility, Hydro Ontario, and Dofasco, Canada’s largest steel company.

In 1979, the year Transduction turned 5 years old, a boom hit.

“He sort of went, almost overnight, from rags to riches,” says Tyminski’s business partner, Frank Ollie, who owns a third of Transduction. Ollie declines to be specific about what made 1979 such a red-letter year for Tyminski, saying simply: “He lucked out. Big, brash decisions, you know? He made more money in a year than most people make in a lifetime.”

The sudden wealth first inspired Tyminski to travel to Poland, but just as he was making his plans, martial law was declared in his homeland. Although Tyminski still holds a Polish passport, he was unable in the turmoil to get the requisite entry papers.

But he had been sending some of his earnings to an orphanage in Lima, Peru, and that helped him make a Plan B.

“He decided, ‘Well, what the heck--I’ll go see the kids I’m supporting,’ ” says Ollie, who adds that his partner is “basically a Third World junkie.”

Mountainous, impoverished and hauntingly beautiful, Peru seems to have cast the same life-changing spell over Tyminski that it has cast over countless adventurers, anthropologists and hippies down through the years.

Tyminski didn’t stay long in Lima, but soon drove on over the high Andes, descended into the Amazonian jungles beyond the eastern slope and wound up in Iquitos, a remote river outpost. There, he embarked on a number of small-scale urban development schemes and spotted a local money-making opportunity: He bought a barge and went into the oil-distribution business, shipping petroleum up and down the Amazon River.

But Peruvian army officers knew a good thing when they saw one: They decided Tyminski’s boat would be a useful weapon in the nation’s war on cocaine trafficking and confiscated it, refusing to compensate him.

“He must have been viewed as a wealthy gringo, “ Ollie says. “The army took advantage of him. A lot of people took advantage of him. He lost a lot of the money he had invested. He went from rags to riches, back to rags.”

At that point, a group of Peruvian Indians stepped in to help the troubled foreigner. They took him into their community as one of their own and taught him the techniques they used to survive in the jungle. Tyminski has since written about his time with the Indians, noting that he ate worms and ants to get by. Acquaintances say the life of a penniless tribesman had a curative effect on the down-and-out businessman. Some even describe it as the source of a spiritual transformation for him.

“He came out (of the jungle) an enriched person,” says Spanski, explaining that Tyminski acquired an understanding of “the conflict of values between our over-commercialized world and the primitive world.”

Thanks to the Indians’ teachings, Spanski says, “He can go and spend all of this money, which he’s spending now in Poland, simply to do one thing: To make things better for Poland.”

After his sojourn in the jungle, Tyminski returned to Iquitos recharged, opening a string of new enterprises: a fancy restaurant, a fruit-and-vegetable farm and a successful cable-television company. Having divorced his first wife, he married a Peruvian woman named Graciela, now 30; Spanski says she is the daughter of a Peruvian general.

In 1985, Tyminski returned to Toronto with his new wife. The couple bought an unpretentious home in a middle-class neighborhood, sent their eldest two children to public schools and took to driving a Chrysler minivan. Neighbors say one of the family’s few signs of wealth was a Spanish-speaking nanny for their youngest child.

Tyminski continued to run Transduction Ltd. and bought a strawberry farm north of the city. Ever the economic uplifter, he has turned the strawberry farm into something of a “workfare” project for needy Poles. Each year, he helps a number of them get visas to come and work on the farm for hard currency.

This--rather than joining the established Polish charitable societies in Canada--is Tyminski’s way of helping his people, Ollie says.

Acquaintances say Tyminski never showed much interest in politics until last summer, when he posted a Libertarian Party sign on his front lawn during a provincial election. He had become party leader in May. The Canadian Libertarian Party, like its U.S. counterpart, stands for a high degree of personal and economic freedom. It is considered a fringe party and won less than 1% of the vote in the 1988 general election.

But unbeknown to his neighbors, Tyminski had also begun writing a political treatise, “Swiete Psy,” or “Sacred Dogs,” the book that would launch him to fame in Poland. The title of the book refers to the sacred cows of India, implying that Poles--who love dogs, not cows--like to sit around and be fed, petted and coddled, just like their pets, rather than taking charge of their problems.

Tyminski evidently conceived the book while dealing with the Polish workers he imported to pick fruit on his strawberry farm.

“Stan was frustrated that the Polish people didn’t really understand how the West operates,” Ollie says. “They think the streets are paved with gold, or that you can get a car right away.” In “Sacred Dogs,” which has not yet been translated into English, Tyminski explains such Western concepts as productivity to his Eastern Bloc audience.

“The first chapter says Poland has deep problems and is losing its sovereignty because of its economic hardships,” says Janusz Sukiennik, editor of a Toronto-based Polish biweekly who interviewed Tyminski for a review when the book first appeared.

Next, he says, the book makes the rather nationalistic argument that Poland has, within its borders, all the resources needed to make an economic comeback. What is lacking, Tyminski argues, is an awareness of what the resources are--and the right leader.

Could Tyminski have intended all along to become that leader?

“It’s hard to say,” says Sukiennik, who never dreamed at the time of his interview that Tyminski would soon be running for president. “But I think he was getting ready for some time. It’s hard to believe he just took a plane to Warsaw and jumped into the presidential race.”

Tyminski’s friends argue, though, that he began writing “Sacred Dogs” well before Poland’s elections had even been called. Ollie says that when Tyminski flew to Poland in September, he took only a suitcase, an extra suit and a toothbrush, planning simply to make some book-promotion appearances and check into a business he owns in Poland.

Once there, however, Ollie says, Tyminski encountered Polish political activists who asked him again and again who he would support for president and seeking his endorsement for their candidates. Just as he had in Peru, Tyminski spotted an opportunity.

“He called me up” to say he was going to run for president, Ollie recalls. “I thought, ‘Good! Go for it!’ ”

He hasn’t heard from Tyminski since.