GENERAL JARUZELSKI has suffered a major setback in his attempt to get the Polish people to vote for their own pauperization in exchange for vague promises of 'democracy on the Polish model'.
More than 57 per cent of them, in the referendum called on the issue, rejected his proposal for economic market retorms which implied price rises and falls in the standard of living on a scale never before seen even in Poland.
By il Smuga also voted 'no' the crumbs of democracv offered by a regime whose one night wiped out months of democracy won in the heat of struggle.
significant that Jaruzelski felt immediately obliged to acknowledge his defeat in the referendum and began by saying that he But there other HENSON of the Polish referendum. The revolt in Brassovia in Rumania, the first strikes wage creases in the USSR in the HOOLIS. like the readers' letters which the Soviet press has begun to publish, also bear witness to the Polish workers rejection of austerity and the crisis of bureaucratic domination ability to make the planned economy work.
The Polish regime, parasitic caste, cannot cope with the Polish people's social needs. These resurface again and again in every nook and cranny of the system.
In holding his referendum, Jaruzelski hoped to profit from the confusion in soldarnosc the economic reform. It is true that Solidarnosc took ihe referendum lightly. True, i!
doubted • rightly the general's democratic commitment. But it was equalh convinced that the well being of the Polish people depended on introducing the market, accepting the sacrifice imposed the population, and on sharing out this sacrifice among the common peo ple in return for 'political openings.
Basing itself on this understanding, the leadership of the underground union adopted an economic reform project close, in its general outlines, to the government's project.
Among the rare voices rascu aralist , this it is useful to note that of the economist Ryszard Bugai, one of the authors of the economic programme adopted by Solidarity at its the development of economic posinonis, wrote that the market proposals 'more a reflection of the changing views of the elite than of the social base and concluded that 'this does not leave much chance for the reform'.
question then under discussion was the 'renewal of the mandate of Solidarity's structures.
Solidarity's coasily organization in the factories.
It has to be noted that after the referendum this question postu 11101C forcefully. Especially since, having underestimated the situation, Solidarnose's leadership persists in the same errors.
Learning of the results, Lai = Ree mi 6e=z 721 • I = I see Pat AME AI R day he is not facing a mass movement which can force him to tolerate working self-organization in the factories.
On the contrary, aware that such self-organization would represent midable blow against the economic reform demanded the IMF Poland's Western Soviet creditors, the regime is less disposed ic such concessions than Beaten Seen I It Titi DUTI -il TEENS irma
Socialist Action 11 Dec 1987
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congress in 1981. Problem clopment or Solidarity's