Miami Student

Issue date: 2/16/07 Section: Front Page

Media Credit: Michael Pickering Former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski speaks on Poland's

Change can happen - that was the message former president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski told students, faculty and community members Wednesday afternoon.

"If you're in politics and you are tired, frustrated (and) you don't believe in the good," Kwasniewski said to a full house in Hall Auditorium. "(Then) Central and Eastern Europe are good examples that anything can happen."

Kwasniewski is quite familiar with change, being president of Poland for two terms from 1995-2005 and experiencing the country's transformation from a communist-controlled state to a democracy. Kwasniewski saw his country enter both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union. And on a personal level, Kwasniewski knows about changing professions - before entering politics, the former president was editor-in-chief of two Polish newspapers: a weekly student newspaper from 1981-84, and from 1984-85 of the daily Sztandar Mlodych.

Yet in his "Transforming Central and Eastern Europe: Experiences and Perspectives" lecture, Kwasniewski mainly focused on the significance of the changes his country made since 1991, when Lech Walesa became president and the country held its first parliamentary elections following communist rule.

James Brock, professor of economics at Miami University, had the former president attend his upper-level economics and government policy class Thursday, Feb. 15 said that Kwasniewski's experiences were of great importance to not only what his students were studying, but to Europe as a whole.

"(Kwasniewski was integral to) the monumental economic reconstruction Poland has gone through the last 10 years or so," Brock said.

In his speech, Kwasniewski highlighted the "soft change of a political system" that Poland experienced moving away from communism, in reference to more violent changes that other Eastern and Central European countries experienced. He referenced, in particular, the series of round table talks in 1989 that he participated in with other leaders from Polish political parties to work to transform the country from communist rule to open elections.

"(The series of round table talks) was an extremely important concept for the transformation of Central and Eastern European countries," he said. "(It was) without tensions, without conflicts, without revolutions, without blood, without victims."

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