Poland’s new P.M. dislikes Solidarity

Press, 28 September 1988, Page 9

Poland’s new P.M. dislikes Solidarity

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw A Politburo member, Mieczyslaw Rakowski, a former Government negotiator with Solidarity who has rarely concealed his dislike for the banned trade union, will be appointed Poland’s new Prime Minister.

Parliament will formally approve Mr Rakowski’s nomination, announced by the Communist Party’s policymaking Central Committee after a seven-hour meeting yesterday. Mr Rakowski, aged 61, replaces Zbigniew Messner, a colleague in the Politburo who was ousted as Prime Minister on September 19 after he was held responsible for the failure of economic reforms and the eruption of pro-Solidarity strikes last month. Mr Rakowski faces the challenge of supervising Government tactics in negotiations on Poland’s future next month between the authorities, Solidarity, the powerful Catholic Church, and a variety of pro-Communist and independent groups. He is a professional propagandist who was the Government’s chief negotiator with Solidarity before the union was suppressed under martial law in 1981. He won a reputation then as a fierce, often sarcastic critic of the union.

He peppers his speeches with attacks on Solidarity and its supporters as “political foes” and “the class enemy”, but he also says the party must accept that faulty policies lay behind industrial strikes in April, May and August this year. “We made a mistake in pursuing a wages and incomes policy which caused living standards to drop, and we erred in failing to draw proper conclusions after the strikes in April and May,” the Soviet daily “Pravda” quoted him as saying. Polish political sources and Western diplomats said his selection appeared intended to reassure hardliners that the authorities would not yield to pressure from Solidarity in the talks. The Interior Minister, Czeslaw Kiszczak, told the Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa, in the run-up to the talks that the Government might relegalise the union, but not as the independent movement with a mass factory base that it became in its 1980-81 legal era.