With Walesa Out of Limelight, Solidarity Finds New Spark

If opinion polls and political pundits are right, the enfeebled Solidarity opposition--which got its start in this Baltic port 17 years ago--is staging a stunning political turnaround. There is even serious talk of a Solidarity-led coalition taking back the Polish Parliament in elections next fall.

That would be a momentous comeback for the trade-union-based popular movement, which brought down communism in 1989 only to be swept to the sidelines by its revamped Communist adversaries in elections four years later.

But what is most striking about Solidarity’s long-awaited rebound is the palpable absence of its most famous rabble-rouser. For the first time since taking up the cause of workers at the Lenin Shipyard here in 1980, Lech Walesa is not pulling the strings--or even muddying the waters--in Solidarity’s quest for redemption.

Walesa left this week on an eight-day trip to the United States and Canada, his 17th journey abroad in 14 months, primarily promoting Poland’s candidacy for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. Except for a return to the shipyard last spring meant to embarrass the government into granting him a pension, Walesa has been virtually invisible in Poland since relinquishing the presidency to former Communist Aleksander Kwasniewski in December 1995.

“He is someone who has slipped into the shadows of Polish politics,” said politician Aleksander Hall, a former Solidarity advisor and longtime critic of Walesa’s trademark in-your-face manner. “And when he does take public stands now, they are quite sensible. I am actually quite sorry that his public contacts are so small.”

Walesa’s decision to distance himself from the goings-on of the Solidarity opposition is evidence of a broader search for a new identity since losing his bid for a second presidential term. Last fall, the former union leader even moved his Gdansk office from Solidarity headquarters to a building down the street.

“It looked as though I was hanging on Solidarity’s trousers,” said Walesa, 53. “A lot of people were not happy with me being there. A lot of people who like me are outside of Solidarity.”

Walesa said his retreat from the limelight is in part a recognition of former presidents’ diminished function--”I’ve fulfilled my role; times are different now,” he said--and in part an acknowledgment that his meddling in Solidarity’s affairs would do more harm than good. Though a legend in his own time, Walesa ranks among the least-popular politicians in Poland.

“Fear of me is what keeps them together,” Walesa said of the Solidarity-led opposition.

Some observers say Walesa’s hands-off policy is the main reason Solidarity is showing its greatest political promise since the heady days of the 1980s. After years of bitter infighting--much of it instigated by Walesa--the union has assembled 36 right-wing groups in a united front against the ruling former Communists of the Democratic Left Alliance.

The new political alignment, known as Solidarity Election Action, consistently scores near the top of public opinion surveys.

Maciej Plazynski, the former Solidarity governor of the Gdansk region and a Walesa friend, said the former president has subordinated ambition to the greater cause of ridding Poland of the former Communists. After the fall elections, Plazynski said, there will be time for Walesa to reassert himself.

“He . . . has been able to play on the international stage while not getting involved directly,” Plazynski said. “It is not certain what he will do next, but for Lech Walesa, the most horrible thing would be to feel that he is not needed.”