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

The SLD leaders were mainly recruited from the reform-minded part of the old nomenklatura.Inside the old communist party (PZPR) a nomenklatura-capitalist milieu had come to the fore. Thelater president Aleksander Kwasniewski (and his wife) belonged to that milieu. Thanks tonomenklatura positions those people had a considerable political experience and close personalnetworks, also the financial basis was relatively strong. The support for market economy was alsowidespread among the party supporters and the party members. The voter support was broad, soSLD cannot be considered as a class party in the classical sense. Aiming to be recognized as arelevant party SLD strived to appeal to as many social groups as possible, i.e. constitute a broadcatch-all party.In the first semi-democratic contract parliament the communist obtained 171 members, elected dueto electoral rules governing the semi-free election in 1989. The then SLD parliamentary groupconsisted of 28 different groups, but opposite AWS the leadership of SLD was able to maintain ahigh party discipline at votings in parliament. In the first years after the foundation SLD waspolitically isolated, considered as a non-relevant anti-systemic political party. The bad result at theMay 1990 local elections indicated that the party might be wiped out. From almost two millionmembers the number of party members decreased to just 20,000. SLD’s leadership expected that theround table agreement would give SdRP and SLD three to four years’ breathing space, enough tocarry through the socio-economic reforms introduced by the late communist Messner and Rakowskigovernments. SLD needed more time to carry through its own internal transformation. According tothe plans the cooperation with Solidarity and the church that had started during the round tabletalks, should be maintained, also the broad political consensus about the complex transition tomarket economy. In other words, more time was needed to consolidate the new party, for thatreason the question about taking over the government responsibilities was not the decisive one, atleast not in the short run.At the beginning of the 1990’s the political isolation was at least partly broken as SLD becamerepresented in the Radio and TV council. After Aleksander Halls defection from Democratic Union(UD), SLD constituted the greatest single party in the Sejm. At voting in parliament SLD evensupported the Solidarity led Suchocka-government, e.g. on proposals about non-confidence to thegovernment. Some important law proposals were carried through the parliament due to the “silentacceptance” from SLD.Few months after the round table negotiations, at the time of changes in Soviet Union and the fallof the Berlin wall, many groups on the political Right put question marks at the value of the roundtable agreement. The need of a broad political consensus simply dissipated due to the waningstructural pressure. Soon SLD came under heavy pressure from extreme right wing groups, evengroups that had taken part in the round table discussions, therefore SLD had to change its strategy.The pressure from outside enhanced internal cohesion and discipline. Unlike in Solidarity the “warsin the top” on the Left had taken place already before 1989. With the transition to more normalpolitics, political experience, financial means, disciplined members and voters were more decisivethan attitudes to the communist past. SLD owned its own buildings and also ran their own partyoffices. However, some party buildings might be confiscated by the authorities. The situation forthe right wing parties and other political groupings on the Left was different, e.g. opposite SLDPoland’s Social democratic Union (PUS) and UP was weakly institutionalised. Those parties had to88