Jaruzelski leaves top party post

Press, 31 July 1989, Page 10

Jaruzelski leaves top party post

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw General Wojciech Jaruzelski has stepped down after eight years as Polish Communist Party leader and handed the job of rebuilding the shattered party to his friend and protege, the Prime Minister, Mieczyslaw Rakowski.

General Jaruzelski, aged 66, resigned on Saturday from all his party posts 11 days after his election to the powerful new office of President of Poland.

Mr Rakowski, aged 62, took over, saying the party was in difficulties after its crushing election defeat by Solidarity last month but he hoped to lead it out of trouble with the help of party members who understood the need for changes. “His role is to pick up the pieces of the party

and refashion it with dynamism and new blood,” a Western diplomat commented. “Basically this is a reaffirmation of the reform line with which Jaruzelski and Rakowski have been associated.”

Once a journalist with a liberal reputation, Mr Rakowski has advocated party unity since entering the politburo in 1987. “For many years I was under suspicion of social democratism and now I am being linked to the conservative line. Both are nonsense,” he said in an interview last week.

“The party will gain its strength from different philosophical currents and the clash of ideas if that brings unity in action,” he added.

Mr Rakowski’s pledge to respect different viewpoints was backed up on Saturday by the simul-

taneous entry of veteran hardliners and youthful reformers into the Politburo and the Central Committee secretariat.

The Politburo appointments of Janusz Kubasiewicz and Manfred Gorywoda — party bosses from Warsaw and Katowice — seemed to be the price Mr Rakowski had to pay to overcome opposition from Central Committee hardliners opposed to reforms. But the appointment of a young reformist, Leszek Miller, to the Politburo and the election of three young Parliamentary deputies as executive secretaries indicated that Mr Rakowski was intent on averting a split between hardliners and reformers.

Mr Rakowski will give up the Prime Minister’s job, which he has held for

10 months, when Mr Jaruzelski names a replacement this week. Despite his Government’s introduction of Western-style economic reforms he was bitterly criticised in the Central Committee for unleashing an economic catastrophe on Poland including soaring inflation, a ballooning Budget deficit and severe food shortages. Parliamentary deputies of the Solidarity Opposition movement, which Mr Rakowski has long bitterly opposed, threatened last week to impeach him for economic mismanagement.

Solidarity also said a Government plan to free food prices this week, expected to double or triple prices, was poorly prepared and the union would back workers if there was unrest.