Development of Parties and Party Systems in ... - lah@sam.sdu.dk

local and regional elections in autumn 1998 UP became the favourite partner for the SLD. Mostimportant was to balance the political strength of AWS-UW because of the possession ofgovernmental power by those parties. PSL’s cooperation with AWS has been modest on all levels,in parliament, in regions as well as on local level. The Freedom Union (UW) and minister offinance Leszek Balcerowicz was considered as the main enemy of the party. Therefore AWS’cooperation with the liberal Freedom Union (UW) was heavily critisised. At the 1997 election AWShad “stolen” many votes from PSL, now the main task was to bring those votes back to the party.In the end PSL overcame the crisis. Once more, the slogan that “institutions do matter” wasconfirmed. Just after the election defeat in 1997 there was also talk about focusing more on theelectorate living in the bigger towns. The risk was a loss of votes in rural areas. That argumentspoke in favour of keeping the old policy line, maybe in close cooperation with ideologicallysimilar parties. After the 1997 election defeat also the party organisation was tightened. Thus, seenover the whole period since 1989 PSL has been well represented both regionally and locally, hasobtained a solid membership basis with a fairly good schooling of deputies and candidates. Theparty leadership succeeded in professional ways to conduct election campaigns, e.g. timing thepress conferences and preparing the election strategies 65 . Unlike under the Pawlak leadership PSLwas no longer governed by a small group of experts and advisers. In the late 1990’s the partychairman was assisted by more than 20 political and economic experts working much moreprofessionally than before.However, after the election defeat in 2001 PSL lost several of its party members. At the same timethe split between “pragmatists” and “nationally orientated” people in the party and increasingcompetition from Samoobrona to weakened the cohesion on both the leadership and parliamentarylevel.As noted above, after the 2001 election the party took the decision to join the SLD led government,but first after a nine hours long meeting and heated debate, where about one fourth of the delegatesvoted against taking governmental responsibilities. The majority referred to the too manyconcessions on important policy issues, e.g. PSL’s demands about low VAT on food products andproduction machinery, lower influence to the monetary political council of the National Bank,financial support to debt hidden Polish banks (PKO, BP, BGK, BGZ) and the lower interest rates ingeneral. Furthermore, according to the critique from PSL, more income to the state fromprivatizations should be used as support for job creation and not to cover the deficit on the statebudget. In March 2003 the PSL had to to leave the government due to low voting discipline inparliament. Being in opposition, a new split emerged inside the party concerning the attitude toLeszek Millar’s minority government and entering alternative anti-governmental coalitions, i.e.cooperation with the Civic Platform (PO), PiS, maybe even “Selfdefence” (Samoobrona). Somemembers of the PSL parliamentary group also called for the resignation of the then rather pro-SLDparty chairman (Kalinowski), rejecting the “flirt with liberalsm”. The plan came to reality at the2004 party congress, at wchich Janusz Wojciechowski was elected to the new party Chairman, thusmarking a more “activist” and “populist” policy line, according to his opponents signifying the“death of the party”. .As noted above, after the 2002 election PSL was to a great extent threatened by Andrzej Lepperspopulist political association Samooobrona (“Selfdefence”), etablished in 1993. In the years beforeSamoobrona had organized several road blockades and violent protest demonstrations aimed at65 Krzystyna Naszkowska, “Ludowe muskuly”, Polityka no. 12, 20. marts, 1999:27-28.77