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committed to establishing a streamlined and somewhat more independent governmental apparatus. (C)
By 1972, Gierek's moves to accord a more significant role to parliament, local government, the trade unions, and other representatives organizations gave credibility to his initial pledge to give the people a wider voice in the system. For example, Gierek has made some gestures toward Poland's two non-Marxist puppet parties and toward various other groups by soliciting their advice on matters affecting their members. Similarly, he has taken steps to reinvigorate the leadership of the several mass organizations to make them more representative of their membership. Most importantly, he has emphasized competence, education, efficiency, and pragmatism in the staffing of both party and government bureaucracies at all levels, and has encouraged feedback between those entrusted with the apparatus of rule and the people. (C)
Although the party's controlling role has, if anything, been strengthened, this does not contradict Gierek's effort - still in the formative stage - to have the party concentrate more fully on its policy-deliberating and policymaking role, and to divorce it in large part from the daily running of the state. In short, the government's role of administering the country, enshrined in constitutional theory but so long usurped by the party, is now to be given some practical content. Politically, these measures are designed to pay several dividends. The government, by being more responsive to the people and more representative of them, acts as the party's primary public opinion agent, and provides a forum for a greater degree of popular expression. By derivation, and probably by Gierek's deliberate calculation, the enhanced interaction between the people and the governmental apparatus may also help to shield the party itself from inevitable daily friction and, possibly, to make it a less easily identifiable target for such violent outbursts of popular frustration as occurred in December 1970. (C)
Despite general institutional continuity, Gierek's efforts to give his varied new programs a legal basis has resulted in a much increased level of legislative and executive activity on the part of the government, as well as in various structural changes. In keeping with its pragmatic and measured pace, however, the regime is deliberately avoiding inflexible deadlines. For example, while Gierek's early commitment to a reform of local government is being fulfilled, the amendment of many unspecified "obsolete laws" is proceeding more slowly, albeit as a first step the Council of Ministers in January 1973 invalidated some 800 outdated government resolutions passed between 1945 and 1969. (C)
1. Constitution (C)
The most fundamental legal proposal put forward by the Gierek regime has been that a new constitution be written to replace the existing one, which dates from July 1952. Initially scheduled for completion some time in 1973, the project, while evidently not abandoned, has been scarcely publicized, and appears to have been delayed. Reasons for the delay are not known, but it is likely these include the regime's concern over a too hasty redefinition of governmental institutions and relationships that are still only in the formative stage. During this phase, Gierek evidently would prefer to maintain a free hand in pragmatically establishing a viable, de facto structure and only thereafter to provide the basic constitutional charter defining the new situation.
As a result, little has been made known as regards the provisions of the envisaged new constitution. A brief general statement on this subject was contained in the Communist party's guidelines issued before its national congress in December 1971. This document averred that the 1952 constitution, "having fulfilled its role in the period of construction of People's Poland, and in view of the development of the socioeconomic and political system in Poland," should be replaced by a new basic charter. The party document also outlined other proposed provisions of the new constitution, including a new redefinition of the rights and duties of citizens stressing their "socialist character," and called for the anchoring of Communist party primacy in constitutional law. This and tentative other evidence suggests that the new constitution, when written, will bring Poland abreast of some other Eastern European countries that have rewritten their constitutions to reflect the "higher" stage of "socialist" development achieved since the immediate postwar period.
So far, nothing in the present Polish constitution has constrained the Gierek regime from implementing its new legislation; the only legal act necessitating a constitutional amendment has been that of the reform of the lowest level of local government, effective of 1 January 1973.
The constitution of the Polish Communist state adopted in July 1952 brought the government framework into close, though not complete, correspondence with its Soviet prototype. In 1947 the
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