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

important. Thus, SLD could not have survived the defection of the faction the Republic of PolandsSocial Democratic Party (SdRP). Opposite, only a few noticed that the above mentioned“hardliner’s” Association of Polish Communists Proletariat (“Zwiazek Kommunistow PolskichProletariat”) left the SLD in 1998.Working as an opposition party after the 1997 election SLD primarily focused on single policyissues, furthermore SLD gained support because of the “wars in the top” inside AWS. Manywelcomed Leszek Miller’s appeal to stop what he called the Polish peoples’ too many “war amongthemselves”. According to Leszek Miller the electorate would reward those politicians and partiesthat at aim at concrete policy results and to obtain more political stability such as was the case underthe negotiations in the mid 1990’s between SLD and most other parties about the new Polishconstitution 82 .Edmund Wnuk Lipinski rightly characterized SLDs policy-line in opposition as meritocratic(“opposition merytoryczna”) 83 . The meritocratic policy differs from the traditional oppositionpolicy, in which case the goal is not so much to change the government proposals, but to obtainmore votes by persistently critisizing proposals from the part of the government. The meritocraticpolicy line was conducted in the case of the administrative reform, the health reform and thepension and education reforms; those reforms were prepared and later introduced by the AWS-UWgovernment.The first leader of the Labour Union (UP) Rychard Bugaj regarded SLD as a heterogeneouselectorate and a broad and vague political programme, which gives to the party more freedom ofmanoeuvre and make it possible for the party to change the attitude in many cases. No bigdifferences could be observed between the right wing parties and SLD as far as the economicprogrammes were concerned. Instead, the political battles moved to other arenas. Subjects such asfreedom of man and fight against nationalism seem to replace economic slogans as globalisationand adaption to the EU had curtailed freedom of maneuvres in the economic policy. In other words,also the Polish Left has been subject to “path-dependency”, which means that no realisticalternatives can be found to market economy, the membership of the EU and the ongoingglobalisation.2. 14. The foundation of the party SLDThe plans about converting SLD from a party federation to a unified “standard” party were not new,but the process was speeded up because of the adoption of the new 1996 constitution that stated thatonly parties and election committees could take part in elections, and candidates to the electionscould only be nominated by the political parties. Therefore, the “old” SLD, at least theoretically,might not take part in the 2001 election. So from autumn 1998 the party leader Leszek Miller talkedabout dissolving the old SLD party alliance and instead creating a standard political party in thenormal sense.The transformation of SLD took place without so much trouble as in case of AWS. 149 out of 164SLD-members of the Sejm and 25 out of 28 senators joined the new party. Trade union membersnow had to join SLD on an individual basis. Plans were circulating about electing the new partyleadership by a party referenda, but in the end that plan had to be abandoned. An organizational82 Interview with Miller in Rzeczpospolita 19 April, 1999, ”Lewica powinna miec jedna liste”.83 Rzeczpospolita, 2 April.91