Ex-communist Kwasniewski wins second term as Polish president

President Aleksander Kwasniewski easily won a new five-year term in an election that proved his popularity as a champion of average Poles struggling with the painful shift from communism to a market economy.

President Aleksander Kwasniewski easily won a new five-year term in an election that proved his popularity as a champion of average Poles struggling with the painful shift from communism to a market economy.

Partial official returns from Sunday's election showed Kwasniewski winning 53.3 percent of the vote in the country's third popular presidential election since communist rule ended in 1989.

None of the 11 hopefuls, including legendary Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, mustered even a third as many votes. The closest challengers were independent economist Andrzej Olechowski and current Solidarity bloc leader Marian Krzaklewski.

Olechowski and Krzaklewski each had 16 percent of the vote, with 33 of 68 electoral districts counted Monday.

Approximately 61.6 percent of 29 million eligible voters cast ballots, a higher than expected turnout. Final official results were not due until Tuesday.

In conceding defeat, Krzaklewski, who heads a bloc of right-wing parties that runs a minority government in Poland, said the vote was a warning that Solidarity must regroup for parliamentary elections due by next fall.

The leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza called for Krzaklewski to step down in favor of a candidate that can unite the fractious Solidarity bloc. Only half of Solidarity bloc supporters who participated in the election voted for Krzaklewski, the results showed.

"If the Solidarity bloc wants to remain an important political force, there has to be a change of leadership there," said Ernest Skalski, leading political commentator of Gazeta Wyborcza. "The current one can only lead the bloc toward another defeat in 2001 election."

Rejoicing ex-communists in the Democratic Left Alliance said the victory bodes well for them.

"It's a knockout," the party's head, Leszek Miller, said of the apparent victory margin. He said his party now hopes "to win in the same style" in the parliamentary elections.

The Polish presidency is largely ceremonial, but carries legislative veto power and moral authority that the 46-year-old, media-savvy president has used well to bolster his popularity.

A former communist-era sports minister, Kwasniewski is credited with transforming his communist colleagues into western-style Social Democrats who won parliamentary elections in 1994.

But Solidarity showed its resilience by taking back the parliament in 1997. Now the stage is set for another tough fight.

Kwasniewski had maintained a commanding lead in opinion polls, despite Solidarity attack ads that included video of him and an aide appearing to mock Polish-born Pope John Paul II in 1997. Poland is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, and Kwasniewski is an atheist.

But the president's non-confrontational style won him broad support among an electorate weary of chronic political bickering and personality clashes.

"Reminding Kwasniewski of his inappropriate behavior hurt him but not in a way that would endanger his victory in the first round," said Gazeta Wyborcza. "According to most voters, those events do not eliminate the fact that as president, he met the expectations."

Walesa, who scored less than one percent of votes, shared that fate of other heroes such as Mikhail Gorbachev, who are credited with changing the system but have lost their political relevance.

Though Poland has recorded solid annual growth and improved living standards, many average Poles have felt left behind by the country's so-called shock therapy economic reforms. Unemployment has soared to nearly 14 percent, partly the result of closure or restructuring of communist-era state enterprises.

Though Kwasniewski has not opposed change, he has pleaded the case of average Poles and vetoed at least one bill - an income tax reform - that he said was unfair to workers.

He said his priority now is to prepare Poland for the rigors that will come with eventual membership in the European Union.