Latest news with #Wałęsa

Bangkok Post
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Bangkok Post
Forgetting what democracy is for and all about
On June 2, I got a sense of history coming full circle in the Polish town of Sopot, on the Baltic Sea just a few kilometres from the Gdańsk Shipyard. Sharing a stage at the Plenary Session of the European Financial Congress with Lech Wałęsa, the legendary trade unionist who led the 1980 Solidarity strike at the Lenin Shipyard and later became Poland's first post-communist president, I felt I was witnessing the end of an era. To be sure, Mr Wałęsa is sprightly at age 81. He speaks animatedly, his signature moustache bristling. But his spirit seemed subdued, and the Polish bankers, financiers, and business elites who filled the room seemed downright stunned. Just hours before, the country had learned that the far-right populist Karol Nawrocki -- a historian, former boxer, and political outsider -- had won Poland's presidential election, narrowly defeating Warsaw's cosmopolitan, progressive mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski of Civic Platform. Mr Wałęsa had posted a stark message on social media that morning: "Goodbye Poland." But since then, the outcome has been contested, with Poland's controversial Supreme Court reviewing a flood of complaints about uncounted votes, mostly for Mr Trzaskowski. Although it was my first trip to Poland, the situation felt eerily familiar. Like post-Brexit Britain and the United States over the past decade of Donald Trump's political dominance, here was a country split down the middle. Mr Nawrocki had scraped through with a razor-thin margin -- 50.89% to 49.11% -- in an election decided along painfully recognisable lines: education, geography, gender, and an ever-widening cultural gulf. Frustratingly for liberals, the allegations levelled against Mr Nawrocki -- past hooliganism, street brawls, and implication in prostitution and fraud -- appear to have confirmed his "authenticity" and bolstered his support among some segments of the electorate. The fight for the presidency was but one front in a broader political struggle that emanates from the Solidarity movement itself. At the centre of the confrontation are two titans of Polish politics: Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the head of Civic Platform and a former president of the European Council. Mr Kaczyński, a veteran kingmaker, casts himself as a defender of the workers and trade unionists who have been "betrayed" by liberal reforms, globalisation, and the European Union. Mr Tusk, his longtime rival, has emerged as the face of a pro-European, democratically committed Poland. The feud is as much personal as it is political. Mr Kaczyński once worked under Mr Wałęsa, before turning against him, and Mr Wałęsa endorsed Mr Tusk's successful 2023 prime ministerial bid. Moreover, Mr Kaczyński blames Mr Tusk -- with no evidence -- for the plane crash that killed his twin brother, then-president Lech Kaczyński, in 2010. Poles will proudly tell you that it was Solidarity, not the fall of the Berlin Wall, that really lifted the Iron Curtain. How, then, did a country once so united by Mr Wałęsa's Solidarity movement become so polarised and splintered? Mr Wałęsa, originally an electrician from Gdańsk, captured the world's imagination as the ultimate "working-class hero", as depicted (and mythologised) by filmmaker Andrzej Wajda in Man of Iron and Man of Hope. In 1983, just after being released from prison, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his potent yet peaceful "campaign for freedom of organisation in Poland". His triumph -- ultimately against the Communist regime itself, in 1989 -- demonstrated not just the power of the common man, but the strength of coalition-building. He had brought together workers (blue- and white-collar), intellectuals, religious conservatives, and liberals. At its peak, Solidarity boasted ten million members -- one-third of the working-age population -- vividly illustrating the power of grassroots mobilisation and civic participation. It gained widespread legitimacy because it was deeply democratic, rather than bureaucratic. In an era of cherry-picked histories, there are many competing explanations for why the Solidarity consensus fragmented. Mr Kaczyński and his ilk blame Mr Wałęsa's personality. Depicting the former president as autocratic, narcissistic, or irrelevant, they accuse him of squandering Polish freedom by cutting secret deals with the old regime. Others see the right-wing nostalgia for "sovereignty" and identity as the "post-traumatic" disorder of a scarred nation that has been repeatedly bullied into statelessness by outsiders. And still others treat the alliances that Solidarity established as an anomaly -- a fleeting moment of unity in the face of a common enemy. But perhaps the real problem lies elsewhere. Whether it was influenced by the "neoliberal moment" of the 1980s or the practical need to curry favour with Western powers, the Solidarity movement did pivot abruptly to the economic orthodoxy of "shock therapy". As a result, "the Polish revolution" became more about private property than popular participation. True, Poland's post-communist economic record has been remarkable. With 30 years of uninterrupted growth, it was the only EU country to avoid recession in 2008-09. But the full social costs of this economic transformation have been underappreciated. After the so-called Balcerowicz Plan -- named for the Polish economist and early democratic-era finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz -- had ushered in radical free-market reforms, inequality soared alongside growth. While privatisation and deregulation lifted GDP, the same processes also fractured the body politic. On July 1, after allegedly reviewing allegations of voting irregularities, the Supreme Court upheld the election result, clearing the path for Mr Nawrocki's scheduled inauguration in August, even as the fate of Poland's Third Republic hangs in the balance. Mr Wałęsa helped usher in Poland's democratic era, but as he recently conceded: "We did one thing wrong. We forgot about the people." Poland today is a battleground -- between the legacies of communism and capitalism, between liberal democracy and populist nationalism, and between memory and manipulation. What is at stake is not only Poland's soul, but the European project and democracy itself. Mr Wałęsa, both exalted and embattled, reminds us that history is often cyclical, and that the revolution must never forget whom it is for. ©2025 Project Syndicate Antara Haldar, Associate Professor of Empirical Legal Studies at the University of Cambridge, is a visiting faculty member at Harvard University and the principal investigator on a European Research Council grant on law and cognition.


Observer
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Observer
Forgetting what democracy is for
On June 2, I got a sense of history coming full circle in the Polish town of Sopot, on the Baltic Sea just a few miles from the Gdańsk Shipyard. Sharing a stage at the Plenary Session of the European Financial Congress with Lech Wałęsa, the legendary trade unionist who led the 1980 Solidarity strike at the Lenin Shipyard (as the Gdańsk Shipyard was then known) and later became Poland's first post-communist president, I felt I was witnessing the end of an era. To be sure, Wałęsa is sprightly at age 81. His spirit seemed subdued, and the Polish bankers, financiers and business elites who filled the room seemed downright stunned. Just hours before, the country had learned that the far-right populist Karol Nawrocki — a historian, former boxer and political outsider – had won Poland's presidential election, narrowly defeating Warsaw's cosmopolitan, progressive mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski of Civic Platform. Wałęsa had posted a stark message on social media that morning: 'Goodbye Poland.' But since then, the outcome has been contested, with Poland's controversial Supreme Court reviewing a flood of complaints about uncounted votes, mostly for Trzaskowski. Although it was my first trip to Poland, the situation felt eerily familiar. Like post-Brexit Britain and the US over the past decade of Donald Trump's political dominance, here was a country split down the middle. Frustratingly for liberals, the allegations levelled against Nawrocki appear to have confirmed his 'authenticity' and bolstered his support among some segments of the electorate. The fight for the presidency was but one front in a broader political struggle that emanates from the Solidarity movement itself. At the centre of the confrontation are two titans of Polish politics: Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the head of Civic Platform and a former president of the European Council. Kaczyński casts himself as a defender of the workers and trade unionists who have been 'betrayed' by liberal reforms, globalisation and the EU. Tusk, his longtime rival, has emerged as the face of a pro-European, democratically committed Poland. The feud is as much personal as it is political. Kaczyński once worked under Wałęsa, before turning against him, and Wałęsa endorsed Tusk's successful 2023 prime ministerial bid. Moreover, Kaczyński blames Tusk – with no evidence – for the plane crash that killed his twin brother, then-president Lech Kaczyński, in 2010. Poles will proudly tell you that it was Solidarity, not the fall of the Berlin Wall, that really lifted the Iron Curtain. How, then, did a country once so united by Wałęsa's Solidarity movement become so polarised and splintered? His triumph – ultimately against the Communist regime itself, in 1989 – demonstrated not just the power of the common man, but the strength of coalition-building. He had brought together workers, intellectuals, religious conservatives and liberals. At its peak, Solidarity boasted ten million members – one-third of the working-age population – vividly illustrating the power of grassroots mobilisation and civic participation. It gained widespread legitimacy because it was deeply democratic, rather than bureaucratic. In an era of cherry-picked histories, there are many competing explanations for why the Solidarity consensus fragmented. Kaczyński and his ilk blame Wałęsa's personality. Depicting the former president as autocratic, narcissistic, or irrelevant, they accuse him of squandering Polish freedom by cutting secret deals with the old regime. Others see the right-wing nostalgia for 'sovereignty' and identity as the 'post-traumatic' disorder of a scarred nation that has been repeatedly bullied into statelessness by outsiders. And still others treat the alliances that Solidarity established as an anomaly – a fleeting moment of unity in the face of a common enemy. But perhaps the real problem lies elsewhere. Whether it was influenced by the 'neoliberal moment' of the 1980s or the practical need to curry favour with Western powers, the Solidarity movement did pivot abruptly to the economic orthodoxy of 'shock therapy.' As a result, 'the Polish revolution' became more about private property than popular participation. True, Poland's post-communist economic record has been remarkable. With 30 years of uninterrupted growth, it was the only EU country to avoid recession in 2008-09. But the full social costs of this economic transformation have been underappreciated. After the so-called Balcerowicz Plan – named for the Polish economist and early democratic-era finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz – had ushered in radical free-market reforms, inequality soared alongside growth. While privatisation and deregulation lifted GDP, the same processes also fractured the body politic. On July 1, after allegedly reviewing allegations of voting irregularities, the Polish Supreme Court upheld the election result, clearing the path for Nawrocki's scheduled inauguration in August, even as the fate of Poland's Third Republic hangs in the balance. Wałęsa helped usher in Poland's democratic era, but as he recently conceded: 'We did one thing wrong. We forgot about the people.' Poland today is not just a bellwether. It is a battleground – between the legacies of communism and capitalism, between liberal democracy and populist nationalism, and between memory and manipulation. What is at stake is not only Poland's soul, but the European project and democracy itself. Wałęsa – a figure both exalted and embattled – reminds us that history is often cyclical, and that the revolution must never forget whom it is for. Antara Haldar The writer is Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge and a visiting faculty at Harvard University


Khaleej Times
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Khaleej Times
'Change the world': Nobel Laureates gather in Dubai, call for peace and climate action
'We did not have weapons nor did we have power. But we had unity, and that was enough,' said Lech Wałęsa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1983 and former president of Poland. He addressed the audience during the Global Justice, Love, and Peace Summit, which concluded on Sunday with the release of A Love Letter to Humanity. Wałęsa, once an electrician at the Gdańsk Shipyard, played a pivotal role in leading a peaceful revolution that reshaped the course of European history. Addressing a global audience, he emphasised that meaningful change doesn't stem from dominance or force—it comes from ordinary people standing together with a shared purpose. He was one of 12 Nobel Peace Prize winners who gathered for the two-day summit at the Dubai Exhibition Centre in Expo City. The event brought together voices from across the globe: freedom fighters, climate scientists, human rights advocates, and youth leaders—all united in their vision for a better future. 'I wasn't a politician. I was just a worker,' Wałęsa recalled. 'In the 1950s, we tried to fight injustice, but we failed. We tried again in the '60s and '70s, still to no avail. We were up against something massive. But eventually, we figured it out. The answer was solidarity. We became one, and we kept quiet about what we were building — until it was too powerful to be torn down.' With a firm voice, he directed his message to the younger generation: 'If you believe in justice and work together with love in your heart, you can change your country. Maybe even change the world.' Wałęsa's message of courage and unity echoed in the words of fellow laureate Kailash Satyarthi, a lifelong advocate against child labour and trafficking. 'When I received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, I called it a love letter to humanity,' he said. 'To me, compassion is not just a feeling—it's kindness in action.' Satyarthi recounted the harrowing stories of children he rescued from factories, stone quarries, and trafficking networks. 'Some of my colleagues were killed. I was attacked and left with injuries; I still bear the scars. But I'm alive, and I keep going — because these children are our children, and they deserve better.' He reflected on a powerful moment in 1998, when the world united for a cause. 'We led a global march across 103 countries. It lasted six months, and over a million people joined. We walked until the world listened. Today, international laws exist to protect children—but the fight is far from over. There are still millions of kids who are invisible to the world.' The summit also turned its focus to another urgent issue — our planet. Dr Mohan Munasinghe, a Nobel laureate and former vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), addressed the climate crisis with a clear message. 'Human beings are the cause of climate change,' he said. 'And we will also be the ones who suffer the most because of it." 'I want to apologise to the next generation. We are leaving you a world that is damaged, divided, and dangerous. I am sorry we let it come to this.' Still, he offered hope. Dr Munasinghe expressed faith in the youth to lead the way forward—if they learn from the past. 'Don't repeat our mistakes. Don't ignore science,' he urged. He pointed to a practical path ahead: supporting the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, which he called humanity's final opportunity to right its course. 'There is so much inequality. The richest people on Earth consume a hundred times more than the poorest. It's not fair. The more we destroy the planet's resources, the more we will fight over what is left. If we want peace, we must first find peace within ourselves.'


Euronews
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
We need to improve democracy, Lech Wałęsa says
ADVERTISEMENT Lech Wałęsa, former President of Poland and key figure in the country's fight for democracy, acknowledged in an exclusive interview with Euronews that generational mistakes have been made, but solutions are beginning to emerge. Despite having been out of office for nearly three decades, Wałęsa remains deeply connected to the political realities of Poland and the world. In recent years, defending democracy has become a key focus for the former leader. "Look at what's happening around the world today—Trump, France, Germany. What conclusion should our generation draw? We need to improve democracy because people no longer believe in it or defend it," Wałęsa emphasized. The former president believes that elected officials should be subject to recall and that the financing of political parties and politicians must be fully transparent. "This generation should prioritize these three points in all political programs. Only then can we restore faith in democracy and ensure its defence. If not, populist demagogues will set our world on fire," Wałęsa warned. Wałęsa expressed concern over the current state of democracy, asserting that many countries are still functioning under outdated political systems. He called for the development of new systems that reflect the changing global landscape. "The state construct we know ended at the close of the 20th century. Democracy, as we understand it, was finished at the end of the 19th century. What does the Left or the Right mean today? These are outdated concepts that no longer suit our times." According to Wałęsa, the new generation's task is to redefine the world and reignite trust in democracy. He emphasized the need for public discourse and new ideas to emerge from these conversations. Concerns Over Ukraine's Future When discussing the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Wałęsa voiced concern about a potential bad compromise being forced upon Kyiv after agreeing to the American ceasefire terms. "Ukraine is defending itself against Russian aggression, but what it's doing is also a civilizational choice. What Russia and even Trump represent is regression—a backward step in development," Wałęsa said. He also expressed the view that peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia would not be enough to bring lasting change. "Even if we help Ukraine win today, Russia will rise again in ten to fifteen years if we don't help them change their political system," he warned. For Wałęsa, the key to long-term stability lies in building a civil society in Russia. Wałęsa also pointed out that the West, at times, played a role in driving Russian President Vladimir Putin's aggressive stance. "There was a moment when Putin was on the right track. But the way the world treated him as a 'bandit' pushed him in the wrong direction," he noted, adding that assessments of world leaders should be nuanced. "We need to be careful with our judgments and first consider what we are doing ourselves." The former president outlined three principles that he believes could help stabilize political life and governance. Wałęsa argued that politicians should be limited to two terms in office to prevent the concentration of power. Drawing a parallel with Russia, he said, "It's not Putin or Stalin—it's the political system that breeds authoritarianism. Russia is a beautiful country, it just has a bad political system." The Danger of Arms and Weapons Development In line with his belief in peaceful solutions, Wałęsa criticized the arms race, including the development of nuclear weapons, as a path that leads to destructive outcomes. While acknowledging the need for effective defense mechanisms, he cautioned against the temptation to attack. "If we continue down this road, we will all lose. The only reason to defend ourselves is to create space for reflection and systemic changes. Without this, there will be no winners. We will all be defeated," Wałęsa concluded.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ghosts of the Cold War
'Here I am, then. I have come home.' So said Pope John Paul II after landing in Warsaw in 1983, bending to kiss the soil of his native country. The mood was patriotic and defiant. 'Poland for the Poles!' came the shouts from the crowd—union men, priests, fathers and their sons. 'We are the real Poland!' The pope continued: 'I consider it my duty to be with my fellow countrymen in this sublime and at the same time difficult moment.' The demonstrators unfurled banners advertising the Solidarity movement and chanted the name of its leader, Lech Wałęsa. The 81-year-old Wałęsa, one of the great heroes of the Cold War, is still very much with us, and still engaged in public affairs. 'Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world,' he said earlier this week. 'We do not understand how the leader of a country that is a symbol of the free world cannot see this.' Wałęsa is not the only figure from that day who remains part of our public life. He and other supporters of Polish sovereignty, in Poland and around the world, were being spied on by the KGB's foreign-operations directorate, whose roster of murderers, torturers, and villains included Vladimir Putin. The KGB's mission was to do in Poland what it had done in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s—suppress the movement for liberty and sovereignty. The ghost of the KGB is now working toward that end in Ukraine. Cold War fantasies such as The Manchurian Candidate imagined it would take some incredible and complicated scheme to put a man willing to do the bidding of the KGB and its analogues and epigones into Washington's halls of power. In reality, all it took was a man whose values align with those of the KGB rather than with those of the Founding Fathers. Some of my friends believe that there is some dark backstory to Donald Trump worthy of a 1970s political thriller: some kompromat, some financial leverage, something. That could be the case, but I would not be surprised that when the history of our time is written—if the history of our time is permitted to be written—what we will learn is that Trump did Moscow's bidding because he prefers the politics of Putin to those of, say, Dwight Eisenhower, while sycophants such as J.D. Vance and Ted Cruz did Moscow's bidding on behalf of Trump because they preferred being on the inside to being on the outside. (These are unhappy men: To live in fear of being on the outside looking in is to deny oneself the rarefied pleasure—the great genuine joy—of being on the outside looking out.) What was it that had the pope and his fellow Poles ready to take on Moscow? And what kind of enemy was the regime Putin served? Ask a statistician, in this case R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii, who wrote a considerable book on Moscow's 'democide,' as he called it. Probably 61,911,000 people, 54,769,000 of them citizens, have been murdered by the Communist Party—the government—of the Soviet Union. This is about 178 people for each letter, comma, period, digit, and other characters in this book. Old and young, healthy and sick, men and women, and even infants and infirm, were killed in cold blood. They were not combatants in civil war or rebellions, they were not criminals. Indeed, nearly all were guilty of … nothing. Some were from the wrong class—bourgeoisie, land owners, aristocrats, kulaks. Some were from the wrong nation or race—Ukrainians, Black Sea Greeks, Kalmyks, Volga Germans. Some were from the wrong political faction—Trotskyites, Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries. Or some were just their sons and daughters, wives and husbands, or mothers and fathers. And some were those occupied by the Red Army—Balts, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Rumanians. Then some were simply in the way of social progress, like the mass of peasants or religious believers. Or some were eliminated because of their potential opposition, such as writers, teachers, churchmen; or the military high command; or even high and low Communist Party members themselves. … An infant born in 1917 had a good chance of being killed by the Party sometime in his future. A more precise statement of this is given by the average of the democide rates for each period, weighted by the number of years involved. Focusing on the most-probable mid-risk of .45 percent, throughout Soviet history, including the relatively safe years after the 1950s, the odds of the average citizen being killed by his own government has been about 45 to 10,000; or to turn this around, 222 to 1 of surviving terror, deportations, the camps, or an intentional famine. As pointed out in the text, this is almost twenty times the risk of an American dying in a vehicular accident. Among the great holocausts of the 20th century, the German one stands out for its particular horrors, the Chinese one for the scale of its enormity, and the Russian one—ah, but which Russian one? Vladimir Putin's employers and patrons had a long time to do their murdering, from the gulag to the Lubyanka. The one most relevant to today's headlines is the one inflicted on Ukraine in the 1930s, the Holodomor, when Moscow engineered the intentional deaths by famine of as many as 5 million people in order to crush the Ukrainian independence movement. Putin today bombs maternity hospitals to crush the spirit—and the fact—of Ukrainian independence. Mass graves, torture, murder—this isn't a new story for Russians in Ukraine. 'Peace,' say the ladies and gentlemen over at Fox News. That's what this is all about, we are to believe: peace. Let's not get all judgmental about who murdered whom. There is not much one can say in defense of the man, but Roger Ailes was at least more straightforward than the current Fox News brass when it came to forcing employees to assume undignified positions as the price of career advancement. Back to 1983 for a moment: The pope said a 'kiss placed on the soil of Poland' is 'like a kiss placed on the hands of a mother,' adding the nation has 'suffered much' and 'therefore has a right to a special love.' Ukraine has suffered much at the hands of the same people—and in the case of KGB veteran Vladimir Putin, literally the same people. And, under the current American dispensation, it has a right to … be stripped of its natural resources, apparently, not to mention its sovereignty, and handed over, once again, to domination by the people who have killed millions of Ukrainians and who will, with the tacit consent of these United States, kill many more. The Poles were fortunate to have a pope who could say: 'Here I am, then. I have come home.' It is good to have one of your own in a high place. But Ronald Reagan wasn't Polish. Margaret Thatcher wasn't Polish. William F. Buckley Jr. wasn't Polish. You didn't have to be Polish to understand what was happening in 1983. You don't have to be Ukrainian to understand what is happening today. And though a lot of these proud American patriots turn out to be on the Kremlin's payroll, that doesn't explain the bigger story. Pro-Russian Republicans are pro-Russian because they are pro-Russian. You don't have to be Russian, or a covert Russian asset, to prefer Moscow's way of doing things. You don't have to be an actual literal idiot to be a useful idiot in the Cold War sense, though it helps. You just have to choose to side with the Kremlin. Trump and Vance have chosen, Pete Hegseth and Tucker Carlson have chosen, and Republicans have chosen to go along with them. Reagan spoke of 'a time for choosing.' Now is such a time. It always is.