Jaruzelski sees good and bad in Solidarity

Press, 7 August 1985, Page 11

Jaruzelski sees good and bad in Solidarity

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw The Polish Prime_ Minister, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, has launched the ruling Communist Party’s national election campaign and attacked underground activists of the banned trade union, Solidarity who have called for a boycott of the poll. A minority of “intransigent enemies of socialism” were “hopelessly stuck in the dying structures of the underground," he told a meeting of the party’s central committee. He also said that thousands of former Solidarity members were active in the party and provided the base of new, legally-sanctioned trade unions. Many former members

were elected in last year’s local elections and would certainly be candidates for the national polls on October 13, he said. Western diplomats noted General Jaruzelski drew a clear distinction between what he called -‘extreme” activities of the underground and the mass of former Solidarity members. “It is not possible to put all former Solidarity activists in one category,” he said. The central committee meeting showed the party’s growing confidence that the underground movement was no longer a significant political force, one diplomat commented. General Jaruzelski criticised the underground for its

opposition to elections, new trade unions and the Government’s policy of more self-management in enterprises. “They do not offer any positive solutions... It is hard to call them opposition. It is a clinical example of political madness,” he said. Diplomats said the General Election would further test the credibility of Solidarity’s underground because of its failure to provoke widespread strikes against price rises last month. The leader of the outlawed union, Lech Walesa, said when contacted in Gdansk that he had no immediate response to General Jaruzelski’s speech.