From solidarity to fragmentation

Abstract

"The complex political situation in Poland stems from a misguided and ill-designed electoral law." This diagnosis of Poland's political problems came from Zbigniew Brzezinski a few days before the parliamentary elections of 27 October 1991. According to Gazeta wyborcza, Brzezinski told President Lech Walesa that Poland's legislators had made a fundamental error by adopting a system based on proportional representation (PR) for elections to the Sejm (the lower house of Parliament). "This electoral law will disperse the will of the people and will not provide a basis for the emergence of a democratic majority [in the Sejm]," he added. Subsequent events seemed to reveal the accuracy of Brzezinskinulls warnings, as Polish voters elected candidates from some 30 different political parties or groupings to the Sejm; the strongest party controls a mere 62 out of the 460 total seats, and no majority coalition of fewer than five parties is possible. Given these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that it took two months to form a weak, three-party minority government. The crowning irony was that this happened just two years after Solidarity-seemingly a unified, if not homogeneous, political movement-swept the communists virtually out of power in the historic elections of June 1989. [Krzysztof Jasiewicz is a professor of Sociology at Washington and Lee University.]