Former adversaries at the historic negotiations between the Polish government and the trade union Solidarity which led to the end to communist rule in Poland say the country needs a new Round Table.
The Round Table talks held between February 6 and April 4, 1989 in Warsaw gave Poland its first democratic elections in over fifty years and triggered a series of events that led to the end of communism in eastern Europe.
"The Round Table was the most important political event in the 20th century Poland and I think it has been the most valuable commodity of our political export. To this day it remains a model of how to solve conflicts," Leszek Miller, a former communist party member and a participant of the Round Table talks said.
Speaking on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the groundbreaking talks, Miller who later became Polish Prime Minister, said the agreement signed after two months of talks was an example of a bloodless revolution and "a model for solving conflicts" followed by other countries countries in the former Soviet block.
But the ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party have long criticised the Round Table agreement as a sell-out enabling ex-communist apparatchiks to prosper at the expense of the poor.
Solidarity veterans see the agreement as a victory in which the opposition gained all that was possible to achieve at the time.
"If anything more were possible, we would have done it, we did everything that was possible considering the limitations we faced then," Lech Wałęsa, founder of the Solidarity trade union and a former Polish president said.
Thirty years on, Poland is deeply divided not only about its past. Tensions are running high between the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and its opponents.
Last month's murder of Gdańsk mayor Paweł Adamowicz, a liberal critic of the ruling party's populist and nationalist policies drew outrage and critics blamed politicians for cranking up hate speech.
Recent elections have shown a deep and widening political divide between the country's liberal cities and its conservative countryside. Law and Justice and its generous social policies, anti-immigrant sentiment, skepticism of the European Union and message of national pride resonate among the party's supporters. But they have little support among liberal, pro-European electorate.
Zbigniew Bujak, a Solidarity veteran who also sat at the Round Table said political adversaries in today's Poland are involved in a far more brutal dispute.
"The insults thrown at each other by the leaders now are far worse than what we saw then," Bujak said sitting at the original Round Table now displayed at the presidential palace in Warsaw.
"We need to look at what's happening, try to find a diagnosis. Each of the warring sides is right, each has valid arguments. Once the diagnosis is made, we can start the treatment, the treatment applied now is wrong, to get it right we need to talk," Walesa said.
"The Round Table we need now should be here, at Sejm (the lower house of the Polish parliament). Sadly I must say the opposition has been reduced to an irrelevant ornament and this hall which in the past played its role has been turned into a systemized voting apparatus," Miller said.
With less than a year left before national elections, Poland's political divide is widening.
The Law and Justice party has grown increasingly isolated in the EU because of accusations at home and abroad of a tilt toward authoritarianism. The PiS has overhauled the judiciary and taken more control over public media, drawing criticism from the EU and from rights groups who have accused Warsaw of undermining the rule of law.
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24 News in English, Reuters