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

PPS was rooted in the old Polish Social Party (PPS), a patriotic socialist party established alreadybefore WWI. PPS joined SLD shortly before the 1993 election. Evidence showed that the PPS wasnot able to obtain parliamentary representation alone due to low voter support and high thresholdrequirement (five percent). PPS’ participation was important because SLD strived to loosen thebonds to the past and become a democratic and relevant political party. However, the decision tojoin SLD was not taken unanimously, e.g. it was resisted by Gregory Ilka London based wing of theparty. When SLD in the late 1990’s transformed into a “normal” standard party, PPS andEconomics left the new SLD.In the 1980’s the OPZZ, also a part of SLD, had been the only legal trade union in Poland. After1989 OPZZ tried to present itself as a trade union in the more classical social-democratic senseopposite the right wing Solidarity with the close links to the church and right wing groups. Since1989 OPZZ gained more members than Solidarity. Inside the SLD the trade union OPZZ just likePPS represented the more traditional trade union oriented line. Thus OPZZ criticized what it calledthe SLD-PSL-government’s “liberal” policy line. In some cases the party discipline was broken e.g.at voting on the budget for 1993, leading to the exclusion of the vice-chairman StanislawWisniewski from SLD. Roughly speaking OPZZ contained two different “factions”, one of themwanted to “politicize” the trade union according to the Solidarity model. After that OPZZ should beintegrated in the Left “milieu” in Poland and gain its own political representation (“Ruche LudziPracy”). Another “fraction” wanted to follow a stricter trade union line without too much“politization”. At the presidential election in 1990 OPZZ was divided in two different groups. Somefrom OPZZ supported UD’s candidate Tadeusz Mazowiecki, other groups SLDs candidateWlodzimierz Cimoszewicz.Before the 1991 election a political rapprochement with SdRP took place, so the trade union OPZZtook the decision to join SLD. At the 1991 election no less than 66 candidates from OPZZ wereelected to parliament. Contrary to Solidarity the trade union OPZZ usually behaved loyally to SLDand for that reason refused to take part in the many anti-government demonstrations organized bySolidarity. Thus the support to the more fundamentally trade union line was limited. WhileSolidarity alternately supported and criticized its “own” government, OPZZ acted as a politicallyloyal connection to the working class calling upon classical social democratic tradition. SLDleadership adopted a distinctly instrumental attitude to OPZZ. From the outset the bonds betweenAWS and Solidarity were stronger than between the trade union OPZZ and the party alliance SLD.As we have seen, the foundation of AWS in 1996 was primarily due to the work of the trade unionSolidarity (“S”) 78 .The differences between the two big trade unions, Solidarity and OPZZ, proved to be insuperable.Solidarity joined bilateral negotiations with the SLD led government only in case of the three partycommissions between the government, the employers and the trade unions without participation ofOPZZ. Thus, the prospects for establishing a functional social dialogue were not promising, bothbecause of lack of cooperation on the trade union side and weak organization on the employers side.Because of the cooperation with the post-communists Solidaritys accused OPZZ of being a nonauthenticspokesman of workers interests. For obvious reasons the willingness and possibilities tobe involved in corporative structures was more limited under Solidarity-led governments. Opposingthe governments led by Solidarity OPZZ sometimes cooperated with populist trade unions like“Solidarnosc 80” and “Samoobrona”.78 Underlined by e.g. Edmund Mokrzycki in an interview in Rzeczpospolita 25 February 2000, ”Oczu zamydlic sie juuznie da”, and confirmed in an interview with me (SR), Warsaw October 1999.87