Parliament Monday debated on a wide-ranging package to transform the state-run economy to a market system, taking up first the government budget that cuts off public subsidies for most goods and services.
The deputies in the Sejm, the lower house of Parliament, met for 12 hours Sunday and returned to work Monday morning, with a further session planned Tuesday and possibly Wednesday.The reform package proposed by the Solidarity-led government will be the most radical economic reform ever attempted in the East bloc - and massive unemployment and steep price increases are initially expected as state subsidies to industry end, forcing unprofitable enterprises to close.
Summing up the first phase of debate, the official PAP news agency commented: "Concern voiced in each of over 100 questions asked the government can be boiled down to one question: How will individual citizens, families, social and professional groups and economic units `survive' the period of changes?"
The Warsaw Pact country whose people led the way in forcing an end to four decades of Communist domination now faces the daunting task of rebuilding a wrecked economy from the ground up.
Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz announced the program to a special Sunday session of the Sejm, asking that it be approved in time to be implemented Jan. 1.
He said Poland must leave behind a system "based on 19th-century doctrines" and embrace one "based on market mechanisms ... where skills, knowledge, able hands, talent and willingness to work all count."
Balcerowicz, who is also deputy prime minister, said the new course would "open new perspectives of proper living, free development and fruitful and satisfying work."
It will be the biggest test of public support to date for a government formed in September after Solidarity-backed candidates trounced Communists in spring elections.
The plan, backed by Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, is expected to meet some opposition from Communist lawmakers and some in the Solidarity bloc, whose industrial worker constituency will be hit hard.
With Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the East bloc's first non-Communist head of government, somberly looking on, Balcerowicz outlined a virtual dismantling of 45 years of Marxist-Leninist economic policy.