Lech Walesa. The man with a walrus moustache. He’s the Pole who fired up Europe with his Solidarity movement from the docks of Gdansk. It ended 40 years of communist rule in Poland and also lit the fuse that brought down communist regimes in the continent and, ultimately, the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That was more than three decades ago. The man who sat before me bore little resemblance to the firebrand who in 1990 became Poland’s first democratically elected president in 64 years. The walrus moustache is no longer there. It’s more horseshoe: white, broad and drooping. The hairline has receded, the slicked-back hair has turned white, and the years showed in his girth. The 1993 Nobel Peace Prize winner seemed to have lost none of his energy and enthusiasm as we sat down for an interview in the lounge of Madinat A Naseem in Jumeirah, Dubai.
“I’m 80. So I may fall asleep. Ask me difficult questions to keep me awake. I love tough questions,” Walesa rattled away in Polish and guffawed, with the translator trying to catch up.
What brings Walesa to the UAE? Barely did I finish the question before the Pole’s eyes lit up and reeled off his admiration for the UAE.
“This is my second visit here. I’m surprised at how amazingly this country is developing. In such [desert] conditions, they have outstanding achievements. This country has a spirit. Europe and the United States are missing this spirit. There is something unique in this place. We need more context to understand why you have so many successes here [in the UAE],” Walesa gushed.
“What they have created is incredible. There is no place [like the UAE], not even in Europe or the United States. They have great leaders here. Very smart. I really like them. I would like to get some ideas on how they do it. We have better conditions [climate and environment], but we don’t use them properly,” he continued.
I refused to be sidetracked by Walesa’s glowing assessment of the UAE and persisted with the question about the nature of his visit. This time, he was direct. “I was invited since I have 20 years of experience working in the shipyards,” said the former Polish president, who came to attend the inauguration of the Sunreef Yachts’ boatbuilding facility in Ras Al Khaimah.
“As someone who has worked in a shipyard, I support the work here [in Ras Al Khaimah]. In Francis Lapp [founder and president of Sunreef Yachts], we have a fantastic person who builds shipyards. He built a shipyard in [Gdansk] Poland. He opened another shipyard here [Ras Al Khaimah].
“The Frenchman Francis Lapp built a shipyard and employed many people. So people in Poland are happy to get jobs. He’s doing the same here. We need to support him as he is a very special and important person,” Walesa said.
Every elected representative should have only two terms. Otherwise, democracy can create dictators.
Much of Walesa’s life is well known after successfully leading the Solidarity movement despite the persecution, arrests and jail term. I was interested in his early days, education, and the job at the Gdansk Shipyard [formerly Lenin Shipyard]. So I probed. What did you do as a child?
The Nobel Prize website say, after graduating from a vocational school, Walesa worked as a car mechanic and served in the army before joining the Gdansk shipyard as an electrician. “I really wanted to study, but the country was poor. There was not enough money to afford it [higher education], Walesa explained. “I was very smart and had good knowledge, but because of the lack of money, I had to work instead of studying. I worked different jobs.”
How did he become an electrician in the shipyard? “I liked electrical work. I was always interested in becoming an electrician,” he said.
At the shipyard turned Walesa into a trade union activist, leading to multiple arrests and even a sacking. He soon helmed the Solidarity movement, which had gained strength despite the socialist regime putting down a worker strike in the seventies. A wave of protests led by Walesa led to historic accords with the government in 1980, paving the way for the first independent trade union in the Eastern Bloc. It was the first blow to the regimes of Warsaw Pact nations, which went on to shed their communist moorings. Many experts attribute that also to the election of Pope John Paul II, who hails from Krakow, Poland.
Walesa, no doubt, played a part in the events that altered the political landscape of Europe. “So things were a little bit more complicated because they said you have to finish what you started. Then you have to go to the next level, the continent. That caused more problems because they couldn’t focus on one specific country. And there were problems, local and global,” he said, recalling the events after the fall of the Wojciech Jaruzelski-led government in Poland.
“Communism collapsed. All the countries enforcing communism collapsed. So the whole of Europe had to be rebuilt. And even the world,” Walesa said of the cascade effect on the continent.
Europe sure has changed beyond recognition. Now there’s the European Union. Is Walesa happy with Europe’s progress? His reply was swift. “Now there are new problems. We need to make the continent a country. How do we unite countries that are so divided? What can reunite us so we can go together and work together?” Walesa asked.
“Half of the world wants to build based on freedom and free market. And the other half says no. First, we have to focus on the values we want, and then we can build something. We can’t find a solution if two sides want different things and they cannot find a consensus.
We have a chance for development and peace. But we are divided. We have to convince each other to build a better world. We are in discussions to find better solutions.
“The second issue is what economic system is needed to rebuild our system? Theoretically, communism is better. Many young people like it because everything is written nicely. It looks beautiful. They don’t know that it cannot be built. Communism didn’t work anywhere. We experienced it [in Poland]. So there’s only capitalism left.
“New capitalists should improve everything and forget about communism. When you’re focusing on a continent, they should forget about everything and work together,” the former Polish leader said.
What does Walesa think of the new Europe with the EU at the wheel? “It’s taking care of the development of all countries. And it [EU] also requires development. Because one country has horses to transport and the other has cars. So we cannot exchange them. This is pushing us to expand structures and focus on balance so everyone can be on the same level. The concepts in the past created many problems, and countries remained poor. Now we try to do everything so everyone is equal. There are no countries or only continents. And there is globalisation.
But Walesa doesn’t seem enthused with Great Britain and Brexit. “Some people don’t want to share and want to stay separated. They pretend they don’t see what is happening. It’s hard to understand. And they do everything the old way. But sooner or later, they will have to join,” the former Polish president said.
“We have to focus on the continent and face the problems. None of the big countries want to solve the problems that we are facing right now, like the environment and the pandemic. It requires bigger organisations. If we don’t do it, we won’t survive this, and it will destroy the civilisation. These are the challenges facing us. And the world was always divided.
That’s where the United Nations comes in. However, the UN has been far less successful in tackling the world’s problems, and Walesa attributes it to poor communication. “There was such a difference in development that it was hard to communicate [between countries] because not everyone is on the same level. So you could not understand each other. But now it’s a bit better. Even when the United Nations was right, they couldn’t communicate properly. The United Nations is like the world: the differences are too big to understand each other.”
Walesa has always championed democracy, but he laments that we continue to have non-democratic solutions. That again, he says, boils down to our inability to communicate in a complicated world. “Democracy also needs improvement. Someone said democracy is not a good system, but nobody has created a better one,” he said.
We need to talk, we need to discuss, and we need to find people that will vote for us. People want consensus. Or, like previous civilisations, we will be destroying each other.
The Nobel laureate has three suggestions to improve democracy. “Every elected representative should have only two terms. Otherwise, democracy can create dictators. The second term is to rectify the wrongs of the first one. A representative can also be defeated when contesting for the second term. Secondly, if the representative doesn’t follow the policies, signatures should be collected to remove the person from the post. And the third point is to keep finances transparent,” Walesa said.
“Everyone is talking about democracy, but it’s no longer democracy. I’ve been going to the United States often for lectures. I tell the students: ‘Oh, I’ve heard there is democracy in the United States. I understand that each of you can become the president. But to be a candidate, you need to have 100 million dollars. So not everybody can be a president.’
“In the United States, democracy is dollar democracy. Where capitalists are fighting to secure democracy. There is no real democracy in the world. Just something similar.”
According to Walesa, democracy consists of three elements: laws, constitution and people who follow the constitution. “People have to have money. Or else they won’t fight for democracy. They will be afraid of losing their jobs. That’s why I created a model that can measure democracy in every country,” he explained.
How has Poland fared since the demise of the communist regime? Did it develop the way Walesa envisioned? “There was a division between communism and capitalism, and the world was completely different after the revolution. It was full of new words, and it complicated the whole situation,” he said.
I pushed a bit more on the current situation in Poland, knowing that former prime minister Donald Tusk and Walesa had joined an opposition protest rally last year [The political situation changed later, and Tusk became prime minister again with Walesa’s blessings]. The former president said: “The solutions from the old times don’t work today. We have two parts in the government, left-wing and right-wing, and they cannot find consensus. And in the religious parties, there is not even a single believer.”
That gave me a chance to query the rise of the far right in Europe. How do you explain that? “These are not good ideas. People are reaching for old solutions because there’s nothing new. And the old ones are not fit for today. They reflect the current situation. And politicians make use of this,” Walesa said.
How does the world look right now, and how can we change it? “The world looks like a road without proper traffic signs. The old ones don’t work, and new ones weren’t created. The world was always late with solutions. And I’m worried that we won’t make it on time.
“We have a chance for development and peace. But we are divided. We have to convince each other to build a better world. We are in discussions to find better solutions. Are we going to achieve it?
“Bigger developments have happened in the past. Four times bigger [than now]. They were building pyramids and other things. Somebody destroyed it. We are returning to this level of distraction. We are at the same point,” Walesa said wistfully.
So how can we turn the clock back? “We need to talk, we need to discuss, and we need to find people that will vote for us. People want consensus. Or, like previous civilisations, we will be destroying each other. For some years, there will be no life. And there will be an Adam and Eve, and we’ll start again.
What does Walesa do these days? “I travel a lot. At 80, I don’t have much energy. I attend meetings, interviews and discussions to save the world. Because the world is beautiful.”
