Word: lech
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Just before Solidarity's meeting, Union Chairman Lech Walesa said in an interview with the Cracow party daily that he was fed up with radicals trying to politicize the organization. Said he: "The truth is that when the tanks move in I will meet them first. They [the radicals] will escape, but I will not. What are they up to?" At the conference, Walesa took no part in the debates over the controversial resolutions. Sitting quietly in his front-row seat, chain-smoking cigarettes, the former electrician said it was "my turn to listen." But he finally spoke...
What was most notable about the increases was that the government did not clear them beforehand with Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa and his colleagues. Solidarity had maintained that there should be no changes in food prices until an economic reform program had been agreed upon. The government went ahead anyway, and Solidarity acquiesced, to avoid yet another showdown...
...second day, printers at Poland's largest printing plant, Dom Slowa Polskiego (House of the Polish Word), voted overwhelmingly to continue the protest. They had to be persuaded to return to work by Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa, who told them that immediate concessions by the government were not possible. Walesa warned, however, that if the strike produced no results, another confrontation was "inevitable," and that Solidarity's next target would be the country's radio and television networks. Walesa seemed in unusually low spirits, lamenting, without explaining, that Solidarity members had "become shaky, scared and full...
Meanwhile, in Gdansk, Solidarity's national commission held an emergency session on how to deal with the government. For three days, union leaders angrily debated the question of just how far they could push the beleaguered officials under the threat of possible Soviet intervention. Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa later described their dilemma: "Should we behave as a typical trade union that makes demands or should we attempt, as Poles and citizens, to go in a slightly different direction...
Whatever form it takes, Warsaw's economic program will ultimately depend on the cooperation of Solidarity's 10 million members. Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa admitted last week that price increases were necessary but said they should be accompanied by broad economic reforms. Charges one Solidarity official: "Incredible incompetence in management is the problem." Despite the party congress, Poland's problems are clearly far from solved...