Lech Walesa: Societies need order based on values

By Felipe Salvosa II

Democracies won’t work unless people participate actively in it and hold politicians to their promises, Polish democracy icon Lech Walesa said yesterday as he continued a weeklong series of talks in the country.

Mr. Walesa, the 1983 Nobel Prize winner whose labor movement Solidarity started the chain of events that led to the fall of communism, also said faith plays an important role in democracy, citing the Catholic Church’s symbiotic relationship with Polish society.

“The world cannot have unemployment … We will lose it, everybody will lose. He’s (the unemployed) not paying taxes, he’s not buying the produce. And he might make revolution … And if the people who have the capital will not start creating work then we will have revolution,” said Mr. Walesa, speaking through an interpreter after accepting an honorary professorship from the University of Santo Tomas (UST) in Manila.

Photo from Lech Walesa's blog

Societies need to achieve “order that is based on values,” he said, otherwise each citizen must be monitored by a “special policeman” and government officials must be implanted with chips for everyone to track their movements.

“If we could bring out the man who has conscience, how much cheaper it is!” he said.

Mr. Walesa said the depth of a country’s democracy depended on whether ordinary people like him could be elected to public office, and majority of citizens participated in elections. More importantly, people should have the financial means to be able to “afford democracy.”

“Only around 5% of the Poles really can afford democracy. We only have around 50% of practical democracy,” he said.

Mr. Walesa, a staunch Catholic, told an audience of students, faculty, and religious that democratic societies have something to learn from the Church.

“They cannot match the intellect of the Church. That’s why democracy is afraid of the Church and they do not know how to behave properly. My revolution in Poland, Poland would not be ever free without the Church,” he said.

Mr. Walesa’s Solidarity had the backing of Pope John Paul II, the Polish pontiff whose pilgrimage to Poland in 1979 was a watershed.

The statements of Mr. Walesa -- who as president of Poland from 1990 to 1995 vetoed a bill expanding abortion rights -- yielded parallels with the Philippines. Both countries have Catholic majorities and outspoken clergy, and are tackling birth control measures over which Church leaders have strong reservations.

Mr. Walesa said Poland did it through “proper consciousness and proper education,” not through imposition. “It has to come out from the conscience, not from imposing condoms and other items,” he told reporters after his lecture in UST.

Lamenting that in Poland and elsewhere, the Catholic Church is being put “a little bit aside,” Mr. Walesa told his UST audience: “We have to understand a simple truth. There is no collision here. The Church, based on thousands of years of preparation and rules of wisdom, is preparing us for the future. We … the laity are working on the same principles.”

“These are simple truths but some cannot be reached by it. I am only hopeful that during my life we will see that the role of faith in each and everyone’s life will clearly be defined and nobody can destroy it. Who will find the way to do it in order will have the next Nobel Prize,” he added.

Mr. Walesa said “heroes” like the late President Corazon C. Aquino, who was swept to power in 1986 by a Church-backed “People Power” revolt, are needed to show how faith and perseverance could lead to change.

“I think I am much, much smaller than the image of President Aquino. I was not able during those times of problems to look at her image but today when I can see what she has done, she deserves the Nobel Prize even more than I.”

BusinessWorld, November 28, 2012