Solidarity Activist Sworn In as Polish Prime Minister
Jerzy Buzek, a Solidarity trade union activist, was sworn in as Poland’s prime minister Friday, culminating his five-week effort to form a coalition government.
Buzek took the oath of office, along with his 21 Cabinet nominees, before President Aleksander Kwasniewski.
In their first session, scheduled for later Friday, the ministers planned to review the budget prepared by outgoing Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, whose coalition of former Communists and peasants lost the Sept. 21 parliamentary elections.
Buzek, 57, heads a coalition government made up of a Solidarity-led alliance of rightist parties and the centrist Freedom Union, which together control 261 votes in the 460-seat Parliament.
Buzek joined Solidarity--Eastern Europe’s first free trade union--at its birth in 1980. He headed its first national congress in 1981.
The prime minister is expected to present the government’s program to Parliament next week, after which his Cabinet will face a vote of confidence, seen as a formality.
The new government intends to speed up privatization of state industries, restructure ailing sectors of the economy such as mining and steel, and overhaul the public sector, including social security, education and health care.
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