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form, namely a “pro-family” tax policy. AWS had fallen into the trap of being unable to
accept a perfectly sensible reform because of a rhetorical campaign slogan about which
most voters had forgotten.
But that was not the end of tensions between AWS and UW over taxes. In November 1998,
almost the entire AWS supported an amendment to the tax law for 1999, a position in
clear contradiction to that of the government. The immediate reaction of Balcerowicz was
to threaten to resign and withdraw the UW from the government. The vote confirmed in
his own mind his worst suspicions about AWS: that it was an irresponsible political force,
both in the political sense of being disloyal to its own prime minister, and in the policy
sense of pushing forward with populist economic proposals regardless of the damage they
would do to the economy.
The crisis was instructive in several ways. First, it revealed yet again the weaknesses in the
relationship between the government and its parliamentary supporters, especially within
AWS, and the opportunities those weaknesses provided for future problems. Many AWS
members of parliament were semi-detached from the government, seeing their role not
as supporting the government through thick and thin, but rather as lobbying the govern-
ment for their pet policies regardless of the cabinet’s position. Moreover, the confused
structure within AWS, and the monumental number of responsibilities that Krzaklewski
had taken upon himself, resulted in a crisis of leadership within the AWS parliamentary
club that rendered many of the AWS members of parliament uncontrollable. It was es-
sentially a federation of competing cliques and parties which lacked a strong leadership
willing to institute an effective mechanism to instill party discipline.
...and Foreign Policy
Foreign policy was another area of conflict between the AWS and UW coalition parties,
and there was always tension about which party really controlled foreign policy. Despite
the fact that Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek came from the UW, he found his wings
clipped with attempts to take crucial functions away from him – especially decision on
European policy – by both the prime minister’s chancellery and the Office for European
Integration, run by AWS. Even in defense policy there was conflict over the consequences
of NATO membership for Poland’s internal military and defense interests. The axis of
conflict was between Minister of Defense Janusz Onyszkiewicz and his deputy Romuald
Szeremietiew (AWS). The latter was forceful in pushing forward his own ideas concern-
ing force restructuring as well as higher military spending on defense weaponry. Onysz-
kiewicz was much more cautious in both regards, preferring to stick to the priorities of
NATO rather than those of domestic interest groups.
A Weak Prime Minister
It was becoming increasingly clear that the key weakness of the government was Prime
Minister Buzek himself, an honest and decent man, but one with no independent politi-
cal base of support and given to compromise at every turn. This allowed him to become
a prisoner of the various factions within AWS and also hostage to the threats and cajol-
ing of UW leader Balcerowicz. A more determined leadership earlier on might have pre-
