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that the post-Communist left would lose the 1997 elections, so few could have believed
that the massive defeat of 2001 – when the rump AWS party failed to pass the electoral
threshold after being trounced by the post-Communist SLD - could be overcome by the
right just four years later. The process commenced in January 2001 with the departure
of key figures from the UW and AWS to create the so-called Civic Platform (PO), es-
sentially a liberal-conservative movement, headed by presidential candidate Andrzej
Olechowski, Deputy Speaker of the Senate Donald Tusk and Parliamentary Speaker Ma-
ciej Płażyński. Its leaders deliberately portrayed themselves as anti-establishment play-
ers, tapping into the latent hostility of ordinary Poles towards a seemingly ossified and
corrupt establishment.
In some ways, the message of the Platform echoed the themes of other political movements
that spread across Europe in recent years, such as
Forza Italia
in Italy. There is of course no
comparison between this movement and the Platform in terms of policies, but the streak
of anti-establishment populism was the same. In the case of the Platform, the policies
were a combination of free-market (flat tax and flexible labor markets) and conservative
ideas. Significantly, the Platform played heavily on the theme of cleaning up Polish politics
and getting rid of the overbearing influence of corruption-prone parties in the media and
economy. Their proposals of a first-past-the-post voting system, direct elections of town
mayors, and reform of party finance were all specific ideas to achieve these goals.
The process of decomposition was mirrored within AWS itself, when over the summer
key members of the movement left to form the more traditionally conservative Law and
Justice (PiS) party. It was run by the Kaczynski brothers, one of whom, Lech, had been
appointed by Buzek as minister of justice. Kaczyński exposed himself politically by using
his time as minister to support the creation of PiS, formally run by his brother Jarosław.
PiS quickly outpaced the AWS movement in the pre-election polls, and attracted many
former AWS MPs and supporters disgusted at the political and moral disaster that AWS
had become.
PO and PiS had several things in common. By publicly declaring themselves to be a quali-
tative break with their old parent parties of AWS and UW, they were both claiming to
introduce a new model of political activity while focusing heavily on themes of compe-
tence and anti-corruption. Also, both parties publicly turned their backs on the Solidarity
trade union, which had been the lynchpin of the AWS movement, and also at the heart of
anti-Communist activity throughout the 1990s. In the spring of 2001, the Solidarity trade
union decided to formally withdraw from active party politics and to revert to its classic
trade union role.
In the last months of Buzek’s rule, the parties which made up the ruling coalition struggled
to come to terms with the defeat of Krzaklewski in the presidential elections, and the pros-
pect of massive defeat in the upcoming September parliamentary elections. What origi-
nally began as a struggle for the succession to Krzaklewski as the leader of AWS turned
into a battle for the heart and soul of the entire center right, as it increasingly became clear
that AWS itself was disintegrating. As defeat became increasingly inevitable, so the con-
stituent parties of AWS started looking for alternatives, attracted to the Civic Platform on
the one hand and the PiS movement on the other. It proved a wise choice, because in the
elections, it was the PO and PiS that entered the new parliament, and not AWS.
