Word: walesa
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Suddenly last week, the inconceivable happened. After a spate of parliamentary maneuvering by the Solidarity trade-union movement, President Wojciech Jaruzelski, who smashed Solidarity in 1981 and interned its leader, Lech Walesa, along with more than 6,000 other members, was forced to turn to his foes to form a government. Jaruzelski asked Tadeusz Mazowiecki, 62, a Solidarity lawyer and journalist, to become the first non-Communist Prime Minister in the Soviet bloc since 1948 and to head up a ruling coalition...
...week's end Walesa and Mazomet in Gdansk to plan their next steps. At the same time, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, officially known as the Polish United Workers' Party, convened in Warsaw to discuss Jaruzelski's move. Poland's official news agency, P.A.P., reported that the President will send the Prime Minister's name to the Sejm, or lower house of parliament, early this week for ratification...
...appointment opened a new chapter in Polish history, the Communists still retained formidable power. Even before Mazowiecki was tapped by the President, Solidarity told the Communists they would continue to hold the key Defense and Interior Ministry -- and perhaps the Foreign Ministry -- portfolios in any new government, and Walesa assured Moscow that Poland would remain a member of the Warsaw Pact. The Communists also retained their monopoly on positions within the bloated bureaucracy...
Above all, the events were a remarkable victory for Walesa and for Solidarity, only four months ago a banned organization. The daring and imagination that led to the dramatic developments came largely from Walesa, who shrewdly seized an opportunity to precipitate the change in government by wooing away the Communists' junior parliamentary partners. Walesa then wisely refrained from seeking the Prime Minister's job himself, preferring to work behind the scenes and perhaps eventually make a bid for the presidency...
...days later, Walesa met with Jaruzelski and proposed that Solidarity form a government. The new President said no. Instead he invited Solidarity to join a grand coalition government headed by the Communists. Walesa refused. Soon thereafter Jaruzelski stepped down as Communist Party leader in favor of Mieczyslaw Rakowski. The President asked Czeslaw Kiszczak, who has been Interior Minister since 1981, to form a new government. By Aug. 7, Kiszczak had still been unable to do so, and Walesa once again called for a Solidarity- led government. This time he pitched his appeal directly to the United Peasants and the Democrats...