wh y w e l o s t
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I. Context of Unification of the Right
Prior to the 1997 Elections
P
erhaps in no other country than Poland have the historical failures of the center
right been so evident and so spectacular. It is a paradox that despite historically be-
ing in the vanguard of the anti-Communist revolutions of the 1980s, with the deep-
est historical traditions of resistance to Communism, and with a society highly religious
and conservative, Poland has to this very day (2005) failed to produce a genuinely center-
right government in the Western sense of the term. “Center-right” means a government
holding to a set of beliefs that include – but not exclusively – a firm belief in the benefits
of the free-market economy (liberalization, demonopolization and privatization), a lim-
ited, but strong state in the areas of defense and crime and a robust foreign policy that is
not only pro-Western, but also resistant to the imperatives of Franco-German hegemony
in Europe, in essence broadly pro-US. Such a government also deeply understands the
nature of the cultural conflict underway in Europe, and is supportive of traditional values
and cultural sensibilities. According to this strict interpretation, Poland has yet to produce
such a government, and the failures to do so were especially evident in the 1997-2001 pe-
riod, upon which this chapter focuses.
To understand the hopes that were vested by many on the right in the 1997-2001 government
of Jerzy Buzek, it is important to understand that none of the previous governments after 1989
could have been called genuinely center-right. After the Round Table negotiations of 1989
that led to the initial dismantling of Communism, Poland was for two years – until the first
fully-free elections of 1991 – ruled by governments which either had as some of their members
leading representatives of the Communist Party (the Mazowiecki government of 1989-1990),
or which were more technocratic than center-right (the Bielecki government of 1991).
The short-lived government of Jan Olszewski at the beginning of 1992 defined itself as
right-of-center, but in terms of economic policy it was perhaps the most leftist since 1989.
The government of Hanna Suchocka of 1992-1993 was perhaps the closest to a genuine
center-right administration, but the ideology of many of its members could be fairly said
to be closer to Christian-democratic than center-right. Moreover, since it was a coalition
government of at least five separate parties, the government found it difficult to articulate
a consistent policy line in many areas.
The increasingly public splits, divisions and arguments of the coalition members of the
Suchocka government, combined with the effects of the economic shakeout and disloca-
tion brought on by the rigors of the Balcerowicz economic reform plan of the early 1990s,
were the main reasons which brought the former Communists back in to power from
1993-1997. They were organized under the name the new Social Democracy of Poland
(SdRP), under the umbrella of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) with their old allies, the
Peasant Party (PSL). During those four years, there were no credible center-right parties
in parliament whatsoever, and few expected the right to recover in time to win the 1997
parliamentary elections. However, the experience of those four years was also a surprise
to the post-Communists, who imagined in 1993 that they would remain securely in power
for a longer period of time, reducing the 1989-1993 loss of power to a mere interregnum
in their post-War hold over Poland.
