Poland Diary 1

Polish president Komorowski wins vote, walks tight rope between Russia and US

From John Dayal

Warsaw, 6 July 2010

Ignoring sentiment and a subtle pressure from the Catholic Church, a highly polarized Poland electorate last night voted acting president Bronislaw Komorowski to power with his agenda for rapid privatization and a balance between Russia and nuclear ally United States, with whom his government two days ago signed a missile defence pact.

“Pragmatic” Komorowski won 53 per cent of the votes against Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who fought passionately on the memory of his twin brother, the late President Lech Kaczynski who died with 96 others on 10 April while flying to a memorial meeting in Katyn in Russia where Stalin’s Russian army had allegedly shot dead over 20,000 polish soldiers during the World War II.

The Church patently sided with Kaczynski and his Law and Justice Party, as did a large chunk of the traditional and rural poor in the highly Catholic post-communist Poland. But Komorowski’s poll managers in the Civic Platform party, a right of the centre group, marshalled a last minute turnout of the younger voters and the emerging middle class to beat back the tough but controversial leader of the Law and Justice party. Kaczynski received 46.99 per cent of the vote in a 55.31 per cent turnout, which was a huge change from the apathy shown by voters in the first round.

Komorowski, a former defence minister, was Marshal of the Sejm -- Speaker of the Lower house of the Polish Parliament – at the time of the air crash and was automatically elevated President under the country’s constitution. He managed a high profile support base when he decided to fight the elections, preponed from their scheduled date in autumn this year. Poland’s modern-age hero Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity movement, backed him, as did men of the caliber of film maestro Andrei Wajda who told this correspondent at Komorowski’s victory headquarters, aptly in a building housing Coca Cola and many bank headquarters; “He is the man for the future, the man who will make Poland a major in the European Union.’ Wajda also praised the new president as a man who supported free speech and the arts – an abiding virtue in the land of music immortal Chopin.

The media here has noticed that Komorowski has had to dilute many of his policies to win over the Poles. Among his talking points was his party’s alliance with the UK’s ruling Tories, speaking of a larger alliance in the European Union which Poland will head in the second half of next year.

Despite a powerful Opposition, and a church looking over his shoulders, Komorowski hopes to have an easier time in his newly won term because his Civic Platform party now controls both the Presidency and the Parliament. “Polish democracy has won,” Komorowski told widely cheering, but visibly well off, supporters in his headquarters as he and his wife made an appearance last Sunday night in a US-inspired made for television event late Sunday night after polling officially ended.
Komorowski has been Minister of National Defence from 2000 to 2001 and Deputy Speaker from 2005 to 2007. His party backs church positions against abortion and gay marriages, but strongly calls for privatization of the remaining public sectors of Polish economy, direct elections to local body chiefs such as mayors and other electoral reforms,. labour law reform, and a 15% flat tax.

Symbolic possibly of modern Poland, a country which has repeatedly seen its nobility and intelligentsia murdered en masse by invading armies over the last several centuries, Komorowski traces his origins to an old and noble family which was active against the communist regime, many relatives ending up in prison.

International observers here noted that the elections coincided with a high profile trip to Poland and Eastern Europe by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She participated in ceremonies marking ten years of Council for Democracy – for which international media had been invited – but took time off to supervise the signing of a deal with Poland last Saturday allowing a revised missile-shield program to defend against potential threats from Iran or elsewhere. It has been reported that Poland also received a Patriot missile battery, manned by American soldiers and situated at the military base at Morag, some 250 kilometers north of Warsaw and just 60 kilometers from the border with Russia's Kaliningrad territory.