In Come-From-Behind Drive, Walesa Apparently Makes It Into Runoff : Poland: The president and an ex-Communist are getting one-third of the vote each.

Polish President Lech Walesa, whose political standing had plunged so low that he once contemplated not seeking reelection, apparently forged ahead in a crowded field of candidates Sunday to qualify for a runoff vote against the popular leader of Poland’s reformed Communists.

Polish television and the respected Rzeczpospolita newspaper projected Sunday night that Walesa, 52, and former Communist Aleksander Kwasniewski, 40, finished well ahead of 15 other presidential contenders, confirming the findings of public-opinion surveys days before the election.

“After five years of such difficult reforms, this is a good result,” Walesa told cheering supporters at his Warsaw campaign headquarters. “I am certain that my second term will have fewer mistakes.”

Exit polls on Sunday showed Walesa and Kwasniewski each winning about one-third of the vote in only the second direct presidential election since the 1989 fall of communism. Under Polish law, the top two finishers face off on Nov. 19 if no candidate collects a simple majority.

The first official results released early today bore out the media projections, giving Kwasniewski 34.8% and Walesa 33.3%, with 1,200 of the country’s 22,472 polling places reporting. Jacek Kuron, a prominent anti-Communist dissident and onetime Walesa ally, trailed a distant third with 8.9%.

The expected Walesa-Kwasniewski matchup culminates an extraordinary political comeback by the president, who in April had the support of just 7% of voters and whose political obituary was being prepared even by loyal supporters.

“Just a half year ago, I had the impression that his mission was close to being finished,” said Lech Falandysz, a former top aide to Walesa who quit earlier this year. “But the president has shown his enormous ability to adapt to changing circumstances.”

The results also authenticate the remarkable political make-over of Kwasniewski and his party of former Communists, who already control both houses of the Polish Parliament and consistently led opinion polls leading up to the presidential contest.

The telegenic and affable Kwasniewski, who remained a faithful Communist until the dying days of the former regime, has transformed his party into a respectable democratic force that is increasingly popular among young voters as well as traditional Communist-era loyalists.

“We cannot just look at sentimentality, but we have to do what is best for the country,” said Gustan Bokszczanin, 50, a Warsaw health care worker who voted for Kwasniewski even though he identifies with more right-wing views. “Let’s give the young people a chance.”

Some analysts had predicted that Kwasniewski’s support would peak at about 25%, reflecting the same core constituency that backed the Communist Party during the 1980s and handed its democratic successor control of a splintered Parliament in 1993.

But Kwasniewski’s showing Sunday revealed the depth of his support and the degree to which many Poles no longer judge candidates by their Communist-era credentials. Kwasniewski has promised to pursue Poland’s democratic and economic reforms, something he argues will be easier with a president and parliamentary government from the same political party.

“Any serious politician in Poland should protect all of the successes, all of the elements of Polish reforms since 1989,” Kwasniewski said after casting his ballot with his wife, Jolant, at a suburban Warsaw polling place.

“Communism is the past. It is not possible to come back, and there is no sense for communism to come back anywhere.”

At one level, the election results reflect the continued divisions in Polish society between those who remain loyal to the Solidarity mass movement that toppled communism six years ago and those who see a more secure future in the new-look reformed Communists.

Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his Solidarity achievements, has warned that it is too early to return control of Poland to its onetime oppressors and that only he has a track record of standing up to them.

Analysts said that message, perhaps more than anything else, revived Walesa’s political fortunes and siphoned votes from the handful of other Solidarity-bred contenders.