Poland Will He or Won't He?

By JOHN BORRELL WARSAW

After skillfully leading his country's march toward democracy for a decade, Lech Walesa suddenly seems out of step with the times. Last week Walesa stumbled badly when he admitted publicly for the first time that he wanted to be Poland's President and proposed that elections be held as soon as possible. "I confirm," he responded cryptically but clearly to a question about his candidacy. "It is necessary to speed up the pace of reform and demolish the old structures."

The words caused consternation in Warsaw, particularly within the Solidarity government Walesa helped create. "He seems prepared to put everything we have achieved this year at risk to further his personal ambitions," said a Cabinet member. Echoed Dariusz Fikus, editor in chief of the government daily Rzeczpospolita: "Preservation of the existing order for as long as possible is in the best interests of the country. New elections mean destabilization and another six months wasted."

Walesa later tried to back away from his announcement, even claiming on a TV show that he had not made a decision to run for President. "I just want to provoke a discussion to accelerate reforms," he said. But the backtracking only prompted many Poles to wonder whether Walesa had been transformed from the country's savior to an ambitious political spoiler.

Although general elections are not scheduled until 1993 and a presidential vote need not be held until 1995, both are expected to be brought forward to early next year. This would enable a Solidarity-dominated legislature to elect a replacement for General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the communist who became a compromise transitional President last July.

The government of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki is against holding elections any sooner for fear of upsetting the economic reforms now taking hold. Moreover, many Solidarity officials and legislators are opposed to Walesa's candidacy, dismissing him as a political has-been out of touch with the new realities.

Last summer, when Solidarity formed the first noncommunist government in Eastern Europe in four decades, Walesa could easily have headed it. But he chose instead to nominate Mazowiecki, a longtime Solidarity activist, as Prime Minister. He also accepted Jaruzelski as President, partly to ensure continuity during the transition but also to reassure the Soviets at a time when no one was certain just how much reform they would allow.

Walesa, though, has grown unhappy playing second fiddle to Mazowiecki. While the Prime Minister was in Warsaw making policy and winning headlines, Walesa has been running what often seemed a shadow government from a second-floor office near the Gdansk shipyards that were his springboard into history. In recent weeks he began criticizing the government for the slow pace of reform. Says Professor Adam Bromke of the Polish Academy of Sciences: "He is having to share a stage that was once his alone, and he doesn't like it."

While Mazowiecki has been a thoughtful and precise leader, Walesa frequently gives the impression of rumpled sartorial and intellectual disorder. Receiving a group of TIME editors two weeks ago in Gdansk in slippers and checked shirt, he made a passionate appeal, laced with colorful metaphors, for Western aid. But when pushed on specifics, he rambled or retreated into further metaphors. "We are like men learning to swim," he replied to a question on whether Poland was receiving enough aid from the West. "If you don't help us to learn, we will pull you down with us."

This week Solidarity will hold its first congress since 1981. Walesa will certainly be re-elected leader of the trade union, and that will give him a base to further his political ambitions. That now seems to be what most interests the man who led the Polish struggle to overthrow communism.