Word: walesa
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With Kiszczak preparing to bow out, the Solidarity leadership circulated a statement to Peasants' and Democratic Deputies calling on them to join in "a government of national responsibility under the leadership of Lech Walesa." That same night Solidarity legislators and members of the two junior partners in the Communist alliance met. Said Walesa: "I want to help the reform wings of the Peasants' Party and the Democratic Party to get into government and answer the call of the times...
...Walesa's appeal won the day. The Deputies approved a resolution calling for a Solidarity-led government under Walesa's leadership. The new alliance, with a total of 264 seats in the Sejm, would thus have a majority over the Communists' 173. The next day Walesa, Malinowski and Democratic Party leader Jerzy Jozwiak called at Warsaw's Belvedere Palace, now the presidential residence. After Kiszczak presented his resignation to Jaruzelski, the three party leaders talked with the President for two hours...
Solidarity's failure, however, could easily have the opposite effect. "Walesa is going to be criticized for certain," predicted Czech-born Zuzana Princova of London's Wharton Econometrics Forecasting Associates, "yet a lot of people have trust in him and really support him." But if Walesa and Mazowiecki are to keep Poland on its historic new course, they will also need outside help -- from Washington as well as from Moscow...
...Bromke, "he is a man who has the courage to say what is unpopular." Born in the central Polish town of Plock, Mazowiecki (pronounced Mah-zoh-vyet-skee), 62, is a devout Roman Catholic with strong ties to church activists who oppose Communist ideology. A close adviser to Lech Walesa, Mazowiecki helped form the union in 1980 and was jailed for a year after the government crackdown in 1981. Trained as a lawyer, he is editor of the union weekly, Tygodnik Solidarnosc, and was a key negotiator in the round-table talks that led to legalization of Solidarity and opposition...
...Solidarity was about to become Prime Minister, Soviet officials said simply that it was an "internal" Polish matter. A Moscow television reporter noted that "it is necessary to form a new government as quickly as possible," then ticked off a short list of potential leaders that included Lech Walesa. The reaction was expected. Visiting Paris in July, Gorbachev had said, "How the Polish people . . . will decide to structure their society and lives will be their affair...