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

medicine, changes in the labour code, limitations on work of pensioners led to decrease the popularsupport. As regards the economic policy disagreements erupted between the two economicministers, Grzegorz Kolodko and Jerzy Hausner. Opposite Kolodko, Jerzy Hausner was willing toloosen the finance policy by increasing the deficit on the state budget, thereby neglecting theMaastricht criteria and maybe future Polish membership of the euro zone. The strategy ofnegotiating about EU membership became “softer” and at the same time also more realistic, thoughthere have been several disagreements inside the second SLD-PSL government about thenegotiating strategy, especially the chapters that were dealing with agriculture. In the end, thepeasants party (PSL) was forced to leave the government due to lack of voting discipline inparliament.In March 2003 Leszek Miller and Alexander Kwasniewski agreed to hold new election in June2004, at the same time as the first Polish election to the European Parliament. That decision,however, was revised after the victory for the government at the EU referendum and the vote ofconfidence to the SLD-UP government in the parliament just after the referendum. At the secondSLD party congress in July 2003 Leszek Miller was re-elected as chairman of SLD, but severaldeputies decided to abstain from voting. On the March 2003 congress Miller expressed at leastsome self-criticism. According to the opinion polls, the fall in confidence to the governmentcontinued after the congress and the EU referendum and the Polish veto in Rome on the new EUconstitution treaty and the fall in voter support was even reinforced due to the ongoing politicalscandals, the Rywin-affair (corruption in the media) and the involvement of SLD-deputy AndrzejJagiello, in a local affair concerning close links between local SLD-people and the mafia (the“Starachowice affair”). Aiming to bring to the public the impression that SLD tried its best toovercome corruption among its members a screening of the party members was introduced,however with a limited impact. The plan about reconstruction of state finances (“the Hausner-plan”)with cuts in social expenditures received broad support among economists and internationalfinancial institutions, but not in the Polish population and the plan was rejected also by the liberalparty Civic Forum (PO).Some observers shared the opinion that SLD might split up in more parties, one of them might beled by Alexander Kwasniewski or by the marshall of the Sejmen Marek Borowski, thereby SLDwould be sharing the fate of AWS and maybe disappear from the political scene. As noted byTomasz Zykowski at least two different left attitudes were represented in SLD, on the one sidecultural line that critisized the influence of the church on politics and demanding changes in therestrictive abortion laws, the other social arguing in favour of state regulation in the economicpolicy and upkeeping the existing social wellfare programmes 92 . Due to incessant fall in electoralsupport Leszek Miller (like Schröder in Germany) was forced to leave the post as the chairman ofthe SLD. At the party convention in March 2004 Krzystof Janik was elected as the new partychairman, but at least for some time Leszek Miller was still holdning the post as Prime Minister.But that was only the beginning. In spring 2004, due to the ongoing fall in electoral support, downto 10-13 pct., and loss of several voters to the liberal Civic Platform (PO) and the populist“Selfdefence” (Samoobrona) Leszek Miller was forced to resign as party chairman and later also aspremier. The main problem was not lack of leadership cohesion and loyalty such as had been thecase in the Solidarity Election Alliance (AWS), but bad governance and the incessant fall inelectoral support. At the 2001 election SLD had gained 42 of the votes, according to opinion pollsthat figure has barely 8 pct. after the party split in March 2004 and close to the treshold requirement92 Interview with Zykowski in Gazeta Wyborcza 26 February, 2004:3.98