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V i c tor i e s , D e f e at s , R e c on f i g u r at i on s …
vented such squabbles developing into festering political sores. Buzek’s own weaknesses
of personality were often reflected in governmental policies, particularly towards law
breaking by some of the more aggressive political players, such as Andrzej Lepper and
his populist Self Defense (
Samoobrona
) party. Polish politics have always been marked
by a debate whether government should seek to establish social peace through negotiat-
ing a consensus between competing pressure groups and interest factions, often sacrific-
ing the letter of the law to do so, or whether they ought to seek to establish social order
through upholding the rule of law, even if to do so cuts across special interest groups
and means saying no to radical economic demands. Under a government led by AWS,
where the unionist mind-set saw everything in terms of bargaining and compromise,
there was real difficulty in initiating any semblance of firm control on social protesters.
Failure to deal firmly with Lepper was one of the sources of the government’s continuing
fall in support and credibility.
Divisions Inside the Ruling Party
The real Achilles’ heel of the 1997-2001 Buzek government, however, was not so much the
inevitable tensions between AWS and the UW, but the deeper animosities within AWS it-
self. AWS was a coalition of a disparate range of parties and grouplets, but over the course
of the first year of the Buzek government, three core pillars of the alliance crystallized.
These were a Solidarity union-dominated central core with boss Marian Krzaklewski at
the head, flanked on the one side by the liberal-conservative Conservative People’s Party
(SKL) and by the national and Catholic Christian-National Union (ZChN) on the other.
Had such an arrangement gelled further, this would have been a major step on the road to
transforming AWS into a much more stable federation, much on the model of the Union
for French Democracy (UDF) in France.
However, AWS remained an extremely fragile fabric, woven from a multitude of fre-
quently well-worn threads. Any move by the political leadership of AWS to disrupt the
finely-balanced compromise that the government coalition represented always threat-
ened its broader stability. That is because the coherence of the government involved not
only a balancing act between the UW and AWS, but also a carefully-structured arrange-
ment to spread the spoils of political power among the various factions of AWS itself.
Part of the broader problem with AWS was at a structural level. When electoral lists were
established in 1997, they were as broad as possible. That meant letting into parliament a
diverse selection of parliamentarians who found it difficult to reach internal consensus.
This also meant that the parliamentary club was often hostage to small groupings of mem-
bers of parliament who were able to press through radical proposals by threatening the
club leadership. There was also a failure to institutionalize formal decision making within
AWS, making party discipline all the more difficult to achieve.
As parliament passed the half-way mark, and politicians realized that elections were ap-
proaching, the fragility of power became all too evident. As long as AWS seemed securely
in place, feeding off the success of parliamentary victory in 1997, the disparate collection
of parties and grouplets would be able to hold together. Now, with defeat in coming presi-
dential and parliamentary elections looking increasingly probable, some AWS politicians
