FAMILY : Polish Leader Juggles Duty to Home, Country : With one of his sons on trial after a scuffle with police, President Lech Walesa finds the balance of fatherhood and politics increasingly difficult. Some say his children feel they are ‘immune from the law.’

It has never been possible for Polish President Lech Walesa to separate his public and private lives, despite a longstanding tradition in Poland of doing so.

As a Solidarity leader in the 1980s, his Gdansk apartment was also union headquarters, where journalists and political activists shared the same cramped space with Walesa, his wife and their eight children.

During his internment in 1982, his wife, Danuta, was thrust into the role of chief spokesperson. A year later, Danuta and the Walesas’ eldest son, Bogdan, traveled to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize because Walesa was afraid he would not be allowed to return to Poland if he left to collect the prize himself.

“Family matters and Solidarity matters became inextricably mixed,” Walesa wrote in his autobiography. “I’m fortunate, because I’ve been able both to be politically active and have a family.”

But since becoming president and moving to Warsaw--more than 200 miles from the family’s home--balancing fatherhood and politics has been increasingly difficult for the former shipyard electrician. The current trial in Gdansk of his son Przemyslaw, 20, serves as a telling example.

Last November, after learning that his wife-to-be was pregnant, Przemyslaw Walesa got drunk and went for a drive in his red Volkswagen. Unable to control the vehicle, he collided with two cars, fled the scene and led police on a high-speed chase.

When officers caught up with him, Przemyslaw allegedly resisted arrest and threatened to use his family connections to have them removed from their jobs. Police said the young Walesa was so unruly they had to cuff his wrists and ankles to protect him and themselves from injury.

Przemyslaw was charged with nine criminal counts--seven stemming from his run-in with the police--that carry a possible prison sentence of eight years. His trial, which recessed last week and continues late this month, has been a favorite of the Polish tabloids, but a source of anguish and embarrassment for Walesa.

The trial comes just a year after Przemyslaw’s brother Slawomir, 21, received a two-year suspended sentence for striking and seriously injuring a pedestrian while driving recklessly on a Gdansk street. The woman now walks with crutches and has been unable to return to her teaching job.

“This is a sad and dramatic matter for the whole family and the result of the several years of the father’s absence from home,” a presidential spokesman said after Przemyslaw’s accident. “The son has attained maturity, and he must account for his deeds himself.”

Since winning Poland’s first presidential election 3 1/2 years ago, Walesa has been forced by circumstances into the role of weekend father, his family remaining in Gdansk. The Belweder Palace, where Walesa lived until recently, was too small for both his offices and his eight children, now ages 8 to 23, and uprooting them would have involved a huge disruption.

Walesa had just two rooms on the ground floor, and his quarters were so cramped that, during one visit, the family commandeered a room normally reserved for bodyguards.

Long-distance fatherhood has been made particularly trying for Walesa by an increasingly irreverent news media. Under communism, it was illegal for journalists to delve into the lives of politicians, but Poland’s new--and often brutal--free market has extended to news and gossip about the First Family.

“For the public, there is a feeling that his family is acting as if they were immune from the law,” said Grzegorz Lindenberg, editor of Super Ekspress, a splashy tabloid that chronicles the Walesas. “His family has been giving the president very bad press by association.”

As Walesa serves the final year of his presidential term, he will have less difficulty spending time with his children when they visit Warsaw. After persuading Parliament to pay for renovations, Walesa left the Belweder in March and moved into a more spacious, 17th-Century palace.

He also seems to have mended ways with Przemyslaw, who got married in February and whose wife, Joanna, recently gave birth to Walesa’s first grandson.

As a wedding gift, the president gave the young couple a new house.