Associated Press

An unidentified woman casts her ballot during parliamentary elections in Warsaw, Poland yesterday. The post-communist Democratic Left Alliance and its smaller ally, the Labor Union, were predicted to trash the shaky Solidarity-led government and other contenders in yesterday's elections.

Monday September 24, 2001

WARSAW, Poland - A leftist party with roots in Poland's former communist regime won a majority in parliamentary elections yesterday, according to exit polls that also indicated the political extinction of Solidarity.

Solidarity - the party that led Poland out of communism 12 years ago but has

splintered to a remnant of its former self under a string of defections, infighting and corruption scandals - failed to get any seats, according to two separate exit polls. Exit polls by the private polling agency PBS showed the Democratic Left bloc with 44.9 percent of the vote, representing 231 seats. A separate exit poll by the private OBOP agency showed the party winning 240 seats.

Solidarity, which needed 8 percent to stay in parliament, won just 4.5 percent, PBS said.

Cheers went up in the headquarters of the Democratic Left Alliance as the results were posted. Party leader Leszek Miller, 55, who is poised to become Poland's next prime minister, was on his way back to Warsaw from his hometown, Lodz.

Under Poland's post-communist constitution, the president designates a candidate - customarily the head of the party winning the most seats - to form a government. It then must be approved by the new Sejm, parliament's lower house. The results were a stunning blow for the Solidarity bloc, which led the last government and was formed as political party from the revered movement that toppled communism.

Solidarity brought Poland into NATO and made impressive economic and administrative reforms, but the rapid pace of change and unemployment that has soared to 16 percent have made many Poles insecure.

"We have taken political risk and that costs," said Jerzy Buzek, the outgoing Solidarity prime minister.

While the Democratic Left Alliance will control the powerful lower house, it also will have to contend with an array of smaller right-wing parties that won seats.

They include the centrist Civic Platform, formed from Solidarity defectors in January, which won 13 percent; the right-wing Law and Justice party, formed by popular former Justice Minister Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, as a crime-fighting rival to Solidarity, with 9.75 percent, PBS said. Self Defense, led by the radical farmer leader Andrzej Lepper, had 9 percent and the ultraconservative League of Families 6.7 percent, according to PBS.

The Democratic Left may be able to count on some support from the Peasants Party, which won 8.4 percent. Exit polls also showed the Democratic Left won control of the Senate, with 75 of 100 seats.

Turnout appeared low yesterday, reflecting a lackluster campaign overshadowed by the horrific terrorist attacks Sept. 11 in New York and Washington. PBS put turnout at 43 percent, while the OBOP polling agency had 39.7 percent. Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, whose has long urged the trade union to get out of party politics, sounded bitter over what was shaping up as a big win for the ex-communists.

"Trade unions are good for defending rights of workers, not for governing," he said after voting in the Baltic port city of Gdansk. He declined to disclose his choice, saying only that he voted for "the lesser evil."

Solidarity had suffered its most serious defections in January, when businessman

Andrzej Olechowski formed the Civic Platform as a pro-business alternative to

Solidarity, drawing talented and prominent activists from the right-wing. Miller, a former Politburo member who has transformed himself into a savvy social Democrat, already has named his choices for top Cabinet posts.

He has pledged to keep Poland, a country of 39 million sandwiched between Germany and the former Soviet Union, firmly in the NATO camp it joined in 1999. He also promised to keep Poland on course for European Union membership. His Cabinet, however, faces a looming budget deficit - and the unsavory chore of imposing an austerity plan likely to be unpopular.