NEWS ANALYSIS : Fears of Walesa’s Critics Confirmed--His Will Be Bumpy, Contentious Presidency : Poland: The President backs down, at least for now, from his threat to dissolve Parliament.

President Lech Walesa has backed down, at least for now, from his threat to dissolve the Communist-dominated Parliament, but the political battle that surrounded Walesa’s feint has suggested to Poles the presidential style that lies in store for them for the next five years.

Based on evidence of the controversy surrounding Walesa’s goading and threats to the Sejm, or Parliament, it will be, as some of Walesa’s opponents predicted and feared, an activist presidency. It is almost certain to be, the events suggest, controversial and at times acrimonious. It will make waves, but it may also be effective.

Walesa threatened to dissolve Parliament last week when it failed to accept his suggested amendments to the rules it wrote covering parliamentary elections this fall.

The president announced Wednesday that he had vetoed the election law for the second time and sent it back to Parliament. But Parliament on Friday, mustering 21 votes more than the required two-thirds majority, overrode the veto.

This time, Walesa did not threaten to dissolve Parliament, apparently warned by his advisers that he would be on shaky constitutional grounds. He said he would “never act against the law.”

Yet some of his advisers and a surprising number of ordinary Poles backed Walesa’s fist-shaking at Parliament, nearly two-thirds of whose members are Communists who owe their seats to a now-ancient deal arrived at between Walesa’s trade union movement, Solidarity, and the former Communist government in 1989.

Parliament has stalled for months on passing legislation that the government says is vital to the continuation of Poland’s economic reform, most notably laws regulating the reform of the banking industry, taxation and privatization.

At the moment, the country’s fledgling private entrepreneurs and small businesses badly need small financial institutions to break the monopoly of state banks. There is no shortage of cash-rich Polish business people ambitious to launch the banks, but the hazy state of legislation has stalled their efforts.

Tax laws are also in dire need of reform, with the government running up huge deficits, its tax income having plummeted from the slow collapse and weakening profits of state-owned industry.

The government of Prime Minister Jan Krzyzstof Bielecki and Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz has submitted a revised tax law, with provisions for an income tax on individuals, but it has received no action from Parliament.

With those blockages in mind, Walesa first proposed to Parliament that it vote the government special emergency legislative power, a proposal that brought the first cries of alarm that Walesa was making a presidential “power grab.”

The cries only intensified when Walesa pressed his threat to dissolve the Sejm on the election law issue. The most vociferous voices raised against Walesa came from his old former Solidarity allies, that wing of the Polish political intelligentsia that sided with former Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki in the presidential election.

“If the president is going to exercise power . . . through (street) rallies,” said Jan Krol, a representative of Mazowiecki’s Democratic Unity Party, “if he is to try to subdue other constitutional powers like the Parliament . . . then we will all pay the highest price, beginning with the ‘road to Europe,’ because Europe will turn its back on this sort of Poland.”

That strongman theme was quickly picked up by other critical voices, and other issues--the merit, or lack of it, in Walesa’s argument--were left aside.

“I am surprised and upset,” said Zofia Kuratowska, another Mazowiecki ally and a longtime Solidarity activist, “at the kind of a method, originating in totalitarian systems, that a democratically elected president refers to in order to have his demands carried through the Parliament. I think it constitutes a very serious danger, not only for democracy in our country but for our society in general and for the whole system of state which we wanted to introduce.”

Much of the outrage appeared to stem from Walesa’s favorite tactic--taking his argument to the people, in this case a rally after services last Sunday at St. Brigyda’s Church in Gdansk, his home parish.

“I’m on the borderline between sticking with democracy and pluralism or having a little less democracy,” Walesa told the friendly crowd. When he asked people to raise their hands if they are “tired of all the nattering in Parliament,” most, predictably, did.

In the next few days, however, Walesa and his aides could see that any action to dissolve Parliament, no matter how it was presented or argued, would be read as a dangerous tendency, especially abroad.

One Walesa ally noted that there would be no avoiding headlines that said “Walesa Dissolves Parliament,” a negative impression no amount of explaining could soften. “I think pragmatism won,” a Walesa aide said. Walesa has “demonstrated that Parliament isn’t representative” of the public will, he said, “but he won’t dissolve it.”

After Parliament’s action Friday, a Walesa spokesman, Andrzej Drzycimski, said that Walesa will make a decision about the election bill next week. Walesa has until Wednesday to sign the measure and announce Poland’s first free parliamentary elections since World War II.

The issue that precipitated the confrontation seemed arcane--Walesa wanted voters to be able to vote straight-party tickets; Parliament argued for a system in which votes can be cast only for individuals.

Walesa’s argument was that his system was likely to provide more party discipline and therefore create more reliable government majorities.

With a Parliament that could have half a dozen parties, the issue is important.

Walesa’s proposal that his administration be granted emergency legislative power in the economic area has already had some effect.

Although Parliament has not yet acted on his proposal, it has taken its own defensive action to set up a commission of lawmakers to speed the passage of some legislation.

Forming the commission amounts to an admission that Walesa’s complaints have not been without merit.