Solidarity man proposed as Prime Minister

Press, 21 August 1989, Page 8

Solidarity man proposed as Prime Minister

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw President Wojciech Jaruzelski on Saturday proposed the Solidarity newspaper editor, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as Poland’s next Prime Minister and won the Communist Party’s conditional approval of the choice.

The party agreed at an emergency meeting to accept the appointment, which would end a 45year Communist grip on the government, and to take part in a Solidarityled Government. But it said it wanted more than the two Ministries it has been offered — interior and defence. The party did not specify which additional Ministries it wanted. “The party Central. Committee is prepared to co-operate in a coalition, but not on just any terms,” Slawomir Wiatr, the committee’s secretary for ideology, told a news conference.

Marek Krol, another Central Committee secretary, said a Government in which the Communists were represented only in the defence and interior ministries would be a “very lame coalition.” Mr Mazowiecki, aged 62, is a close adviser to Solidarity’s chairman, Lech Walesa. He will lead the first Government to be dominated by nonCommunists since the aftermath of World War 11. It was a stunning turnaround in the fortunes of Solidarity. The union became the first independent labour movement in Eastern Europe in 1980

and was suppressed under martial law in 1981. It was relegalised only last April.

General Jaruzelski nominated Mr Mazowiecki after accepting the resignation of the Prime Minister, Czeslaw Kiszczak, who took office on August 2 but failed in his efforts to put together a Communistled Government. In a foretaste of the problems likely to face Mr Mazowiecki, several thousand miners, power workers, transport workers and medical staff went on strike on Saturday and yesterday in protest at food price rises-. Mr Mazowiecki spent

yesterday walking in woods outside Warsaw, contemplating what politicians to include in his Government. Interviewed on Polish television, Mr Mazowiecki said, “I am worried about what may happen, and that’s why I came here, to think about what awaits me.”

He said Poland’s economic problems were especially grave. “There are no miraculous solutions for that. There are many factors involved. People want things to be better in this country,” he said.

President Jaruzelski said the formation of a Solidarity-led Government

would help overcome Poland’s economic difficulties and would continue the reforms begun when the authorities restored the union to legality. “In the present situation, the President sees a need to create a Government enjoying the necessary support of parliamentary groups and to build it on the foundations of broad agreement between Poland’s political and social forces,” said the statement from Mr Jaruzelski’s office.

Many Central Committee members were enraged at their party’s failure to put up a stronger fight against Solidarity.