Walesa Runs Behind in Polish Vote

President Lech Walesa, the hard-nosed shipyard electrician who helped topple the Communist regime in Poland, was in danger of being toppled himself by a former member of the regime in a runoff election Sunday.

“If it happens, I will start singing, ‘God, give us back our free homeland,’ ” said Solidarity trade union leader Marian Krzaklewski, on the verge of tears as early election results showed Walesa narrowly losing.

Selected returns from a small sample of the country’s polling places put challenger Aleksander Kwasniewski ahead by about three percentage points, a lead that Polish television predicted early today is unlikely to change. The returns from 1,150 of 22,472 polling stations showed Kwasniewski with 51.4% of the vote to Walesa’s 48.6%.

“Taking into consideration that last time our margin of error was 0.4%, I have no reason to believe that the final results will be any different from our predictions,” said Wojciech Pawlak, director of the OBOP institute, the polling agency for Polish television.

The stunning forecast came despite a series of exit polls that had shown Walesa slightly ahead and a general expectation into late Sunday night that the race would be too close to call before official results are due this evening.

Even so, Kwasniewski, the 41-year-old leader of the social democratic offspring of the former Communist Party, did not claim victory. Nor did Walesa, the 52-year-old Solidarity chief who became president in 1990, concede defeat.

Yet the moods of the two candidates reflected the widespread belief that Kwasniewski, a Cabinet minister in two Communist governments who later embraced Poland’s economic and democratic reforms, was about to oust the man who had become a universal symbol of the struggle against Communist oppression.

“Lech Walesa has met the same fate as Winston Churchill--he won the war and lost the election,” said Adam Michnik, a former Solidarity activist and now editor of Poland’s largest newspaper.

An uncharacteristically soft-spoken Walesa addressed reporters only briefly at the presidential palace early in the evening, leaving his supporters to face the grim news of the early returns alone and in silence.

“I want to thank all those who voted for me and all those who believed in me, but the situation is so fluid that I cannot make any further comment,” Walesa said.

Kwasniewski, although insisting it was too early to celebrate, waded through a throng of well-wishers who were chanting his name and delivered a pep talk about the days ahead. Smiling, energetic and sounding every bit the winner, he issued an appeal for unity, a theme he sounded throughout the often divisive campaign.

“Poland doesn’t have to be divided. We have to look for what unites us,” he said. “This is the end of the election campaign. Tomorrow, we start working.”

A Kwasniewski victory would follow a trend across the former East Bloc, where disenchanted voters have increasingly turned to parties dominated by former Communists, and would complete a clean sweep for the new-look former Communists in Poland.

Kwasniewski’s Democratic Left Alliance has controlled Parliament since winning elections two years ago, and throughout the presidential campaign, Kwasniewski went out of his way to show sympathy toward Poles who have grown nostalgic for the economic certainty of the Communist past.

A preliminary analysis of exit poll data showed that Kwasniewski fared better among those who have benefited least from the democratic and economic transformation--especially those living in small towns--while Walesa attracted more votes among the educated, more affluent electorate in big cities.

“This is not a national drama, as some people have said,” Stanislaw Iwinski, a member of Parliament from Kwasniewski’s party, said during a televised panel discussion. “The man who is most probably going to be our next president is a modern, pragmatic politician who is for combining economic effectiveness with social sensitivity.”

A leading official with the Roman Catholic Church, a strong opponent of Kwasniewski and his party, sounded a more general alarm.

“This is a choice between two people and two value systems--a set of Christian values and a system that I would call neo-pagan,” Cardinal Jozef Glemp said after voting in Warsaw.

The close results reflect the deep schism the campaign has exposed in Poland, an economic success story in the former East Bloc but a country still ill at ease with its recent past.

Although the two candidates differ little on most major issues, their dramatically divergent routes to the presidential contest--and their competing recollections of history--split the electorate into hostile camps. Walesa and Kwasniewski were positioned on opposite sides of the negotiating table in 1989 when the Communist regime agreed to introduce democratic reforms, marking the beginning of the end of communism in Eastern Europe.

“The electorate is very divided,” said Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, who headed Kwasniewski’s campaign effort. “This is going to be a big test of our democracy and our responsibility.”

Emotions ran so high Sunday that a record number of Polish voters endured snow and bitter cold to cast ballots, according to preliminary estimates. The 68% turnout was a huge increase over the level five years ago when Poles were given their first chance to vote in a democratic presidential election.

Although it was too early to declare a winner with absolute certainty, the neck-and-neck exit poll results were seen as a bad sign for Walesa, who had said he would win at least 53% of the vote despite a growing perception among voters that his confrontational style is out of step with the changing country.

Kwasniewski’s leftist party has a record of finishing stronger than exit polls forecast because many voters are reluctant to tell pollsters they support the ex-Communists. Kwasniewski himself has enjoyed consistent popularity since his party won the parliamentary elections in 1993. He is well-spoken, urbane and known for seeking compromise--traits that many Poles say they consider presidential.

Many voters complained Sunday that they were being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, but Kwasniewski and Walesa emerged two weeks ago as clear victors among 17 candidates.

Analysts said both campaigns were fueled in part by public enmity toward the two candidates.

“Walesa’s biggest asset was the existence of Kwasniewski, and Kwasniewski’s biggest asset was the existence of Walesa,” said pollster Radoslaw Markowski. “It created a polarization of the electorate, bringing everything back to symbols and oversimplifying issues into Solidarity versus post-Communist.”