Wałęsa dissolved the Sejm and called an election, to take place in September. In emulation of Piłsudski, he created a Non-Party Bloc of Support for Reform,but this onlywon 5.4 per cent of the vote. The highest scorer, with 20.4 per cent, was the post-communist SLD, followed by the Polish People’s Party (PSL). The despised former communist government spokesman Jerzy Urban reappeared on television, clutching a bottle of champagne and sticking out his tongue at the viewers—and at the whole post-Solidarność camp.
There followed four years of post-communist rule, first under the laconic PSL leader Waldemar Pawłak, then SLD’s Józef Oleksy, followed by Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz. Emboldened by their party’s victory at the polls, creatures of the communist regime who still staffed ministries and state enterprises at every level inaugurated an orgy of corruption, facilitated by the start of a far-reaching privatisation of the state sector. Earlier privatisations and private-public partnerships had provided golden opportunities for the old nomenklatura, but the programme of wholesale privatisation that began in 1994 offered far richer pickings. Friends or clients were placed on the boards of privatised businesses, usually for a financial consideration, while other businesses were sold off to them at grossly undervalued rates. Fortunes were also made on insider trading in the course of privatisation by those close enough to the politicians and heads of enterprises. A number of politicians also became involved with organised crime, which burgeoned in the prevailing climate.
Such levels of corruption shocked the electorate, as did the disclosure, in December 1995, that Prime Minister Oleksy was still on the payroll of the Russian secret service as an active agent. But the post-communists were competent and, in contrast to the post-Solidarność governments, did not ceaselessly quarrel amongst themselves, as a result of which things did get done. President Wałęsa’s attempts to call them to order took the form of often poorly planned attacks that ended in conflicts which he usually lost, further undermining his authority.
At the next presidential elections, in November 1995, Wałęsa lost to the SLD candidate Aleksander Kwaśniewski, winning 48.3 per cent of the vote to the latter’s 51.7. Kwaśniewski was a former PZPR ideologue singled out in the 1980s as a rising star, but it was not this that won him the presidency. His comparatively youthful looks, the image of a smartly suited, tennis-playing, cosmopolitan new man he projected, and not least his conveniently media-friendly wife, contrasted with those of the garrulous, slightly crude and provincial Wałęsa, and appealed to the soap-opera-conditioned middle electorate.
Kwaśniewski was also a cunning politician with a gift for achieving his goals, and he cut a statesmanlike figure that permitted him to distance himself from the growing stink of corruption (although he was heavily implicated). He pushed through the new constitution, a compromise which inspired little enthusiasm on either side of the political spectrum, in May 1997, and vigorously promoted the process of Poland’s accession to the European Union and to NATO.
Eager to avoid a repetition of the defeat they suffered in 1993, largely as a result of their lack of a unified voice, the post-Solidarność parties prepared for the parliamentary elections of September 1997 by coalescing in a Solidarność Election Campaign (AWS). This duly won the elections, polling 33.8 per cent of the vote, and formed a government under Jerzy Buzek, who was to be the only premier to remain in office for a full parliamentary term.
Buzek’s party was little more than an uneasy alliance, and it had to form a coalition with the Union of Freedom (UW), which was to prove a shaky partner. He faced the challenge of having to bring the country into line with European norms as part of the process of preparing for EU membership and to implement a series of reforms in the health service, education, pensions, the civil service and local government, which infringed interests and were bound to cause hardship. His government was bedevilled by strikes and demonstrations organised, ironically, by the very trade union movement that had brought him to power. While Buzek did manage to carry through a number of sensible reforms, his government was unloved. The only member who achieved a measure of popularity was the Minister of Justice Lech Kaczyński, whose tough line on crime was seen to produce results.