wh y w e l o s t
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AWS ultimately drew its political legitimacy from having been on the anti-Communist
side during the pre-1989 period. Now, the electorate was telling the leadership of the right
that it no longer regarded that as enough to win their vote. The beneficiaries of this col-
lapse of faith were PO and PiS, who decided to seek support not through appealing to past
glories but by offering a clear policy alternative to the SLD, especially in economics, chal-
lenging the SLD from the point of view of policy, not ideology. The baton on the center
and right of Polish politics was about to be picked up by politicians who, although not
entirely blame-free for the debacles of the last four years, were at least seeking to redefine
what anti-Communist politics should look like. That opportunity, of creating a non-Com-
munist opposition which was both free-market and conservative, rather than statist and
reactionary, was at the end of 2001 within the reach of Poland’s right – and by 2005, it was
ready to be grasped and carried towards victory.
In the intervening years, both Civic Platform and Law and Justice have emerged as the
unchallenged standard bearers of the Polish right, preparing to take power in the elec-
tions of 2005. To reach this position they were helped by the total collapse of the SLD,
which had stormed to power in 2001, through a series of highly public corruption
scandals involving the upper reaches of government. But the key to their success was
their rejection of any affiliation with the compromised right-of-center government
of Jerzy Buzek, and to define themselves against both the Communists and the failed
right. The other pillar of their success was their transparent and strict application of
the highest ethical standards to their membership and leaders, and intolerance of cor-
ruption or nepotism in their own ranks. Finally both parties invested large amounts of
time and resources into defining their policies professionally and competently, even if
those policies are anathema to the traditional electoral base of the “old right,” such as
trade unions. In Poland, the “new right” has discovered what the successful right-of-
center parties in the United States under Ronald Reagan and in the United Kingdom
under Margaret Thatcher discovered. This is that an open and principled dialogue on
difficult policy issues delivered by credible politicians is the way to achieve political
success, even in Central Europe. How far that electoral success in 2005 will be trans-
formed into a permanent dominance of the political scene in the future remains to
be seen.
APPENDIX:
List of Major Parties and Their Acronyms
Labor Union - UP
Alliance of the Democratic Left - SLD
Polish Peasant Party - PSL
Self-Defense - SO
Freedom Union - UW
Civic Platform - PO
Law and Justice - PiS
League of Polish Families - LPR
