Polish Prime Minister Forced to Temporarily Stay in Office

Poland’s parliament forced Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki to stay in office temporarily by refusing to debate his sudden resignation.

Deputies in the Sejm accepted a proposal by Speaker Mikolaj Kozakiewicz today that Mazowiecki’s resignation should not be debated until his government presented a full account of its activities.

Mazowiecki submitted the resignation of his government Monday after his crushing defeat by Lech Walesa and outsider Stanislaw Tyminski in the first round of presidential elections.

The resignation does not take effect until a decision by the Sejm, which has the right to accept or reject it.

Meanwhile, Walesa said today Poland faced “something like civil war” if Tyminski, who emerged from obscurity to mount a presidential bid, beat him in elections. He accused his rival of being backed by former Communists and the secret police.

“Things are really very serious. I’m terrified by how far society is dissatisfied with us and with what is going on in Poland,” the Solidarity leader told a meeting of the union’s national commission in Gdansk.

“If we lose, Tyminski will last half a year and then there’ll be something like civil war,” he said.

Walesa, who faces Tyminski in a second-round election on Dec. 9, Wednesday told a meeting the emigre businessman, who got rich in Canada and Peru, was an amateur who “fell out of a bamboo tree.”