Back to slavish loyalty

Press, 29 January 1982, Page 6

Back to slavish loyalty

By ROGER BOYES, of “The Times,” through NZPA. Warsaw Statistics have become a substitute for facts since martial law was imposed in Poland, so it was no surprise to hear that two days of debate in the Sejm (Parliament) had produced more than half a million words, and no surprise • either that someone was counting. Probably the most telling, the most damning of these words came late on Monday night when a flushed deputy stood up and shouted at the liberal-minded Karol Malcuzynski: “How dare you lecture our leader: what gives you the right to criticise him?”

Slavish loyalty is back in fashion in the Sejm: out of 460 deputies only five abstained and one voted against the martial law decrees this week — even though military rule had been proclaimed, unconstitutionally, without Sejm approval. Talk to one of the deputies in the Communist Party faction (51 per cent of the chamber), a member of the reconstituted; , Roman Catholic Pax faction, or one from the “satellite” parties, the Democratic and Peasants

parties, and one receives the same bland stare: nothing has changed under martial law, we are still the vital, critical organ that we were seven weeks ago. Talk to one of the five abstainers and the impression is different: they are mourning for a lost opportunity, the loss of a chamber that could have channelled public discontent to the Government, playing a moderating role, interpreting j the Government to the people and modifying Politburo initiatives.

That role, though it sounds hopelessly ambitious to other East Europeans brought up on the fact that the Politburo makes decisions and Parliament ratifies them without demur, was achieved in the Poland of Solidarity. Slowly, Poles who had lost faith in the party, their bureaucrats, shopkeepers, and their currency, were beginning to believe in the Sejm. Though dominated by members of the Communist Party and though clearly not democratic in a .Western sense — no free elections — it had developed democratic instincts, setting strictly defined limits on the power of the party. Now, under martial law, the party has little power to

limit and it is difficult to see how the Sejm can be anything more than a polite, uncritical legitimiser of policies shaped by the Military Council.

Yet the old critical Sejm could be of greater service to the military leadership. The better to learn of resistance to autocratic legislation in Parliament, where deputies have immunity from prosecution, than wait for that resistance to spill over in the-streets. In the six months before martial law was imposed, the Sejm had changed the focus of proposed legislation, deleted what it saw as repressive clauses and actively spoke out in favour of Solidarity, or at least its moderate faction. Yet when Mr Malcuzynski, who is not affiliated to any party, spoke of the nonsense of pretending that there was now “public consultation” over food prices — there is no way of consulting anybody as all unions are suspended — he was greeted with hoots of derision.

Solidarity was mentioned only in combination with the words “extremist” and “anarchist.” The Sejm’s collective memory appeared to have been wiped clean in the past, weeks of suspension.