MIAMI - Lech Walesa, who rose from shipyard electrical worker to president of Poland, helping topple the Soviet empire on the way, urged listeners here seeking Cuba's liberation to bury divisive differences and prepare for sudden leadership when Fidel Castro's dictatorship crumbles.
Appearing on behalf of the Friedrich Hayek Latin American University of Freedom here (May 24), the Polish Solidarity union leader warned that after Castro's state socialism falls, "you will have only three to six months" in which to program new rules for competition in freedom. The Marxists "are the `old boys,'" he said. Many studied together in the West; "you trained them very well!"
Within a few months after liberation, the communists will have regrouped, with new logos and roles, many as capitalists, and they could recapture the field--as they have for the moment in Poland.
But a communist monopoly will never win in Poland, he later added, even though the Solidarity unionists number only about 100,000 members. The "repainted" communists total about 400,000, still quite a drop from their three million membership before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
As for Cuba, "No one knows which event will start the avalanche," Walesa told attentive listeners, "but it is sure to come down. And if you do not have realistic solutions and programs ready, you will have chaos." Prepare new laws now, ready for adoption, he repeated.
The Hayek University, named after the Austrian economist who explained competitive systems' superiority over monopoly states, is a project of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). President Walesa will be counselor general of the university's Lech Walesa School on Free Labor Studies.
A key university founder is Roberto A. Weill, engineer and president of the board of regents, while Jorge Mas Canosa, CANF board chairman, chairs the university board of trustees. So far, the university exists mainly on paper but has begun study courses on economic and political freedom.
Walesa asked why Castro has survived so long, answering that maybe in part because opponents have too long applied the teachings of the Old Testament--i.e., the tooth-for-a-tooth idea. And now, "Why not try the New Testament?...I know that is difficult. I know, having applied it when we were winning, that if you applied it, your victory might have arrived by now."
That does not mean pardoning "the criminals," he later said; "the communist leaders have to be dealt with." Don't try to dialogue with Castro, he added, having been briefed here about constant pressures favoring Castro, who in 1958 wrote that his life's destiny was to wage war on the Americans. Walesa urged the strugglers for freedom to think smarter, recognize that not all communists are bad, and calculate how to split away the salvable ones. If you attack them indiscriminately, you only unify your enemies.
Despite jet lag and hours of meetings, speeches, and photo sessions, Walesa later cheerfully sat on the edge of a low stage and answered media questions shot at him in three languages. His interpreter was multilingual. Once Walesa sparred verbally in Polish with a broadcaster who represented state-owned Radio Polonia.
Walesa said sharply, "If Poland proclaims democracy, I am right; if not, I am wrong," according to the interpreter's translation.
The three primary problems in a post-communist society result from dictators' having destroyed competing political parties, the lack of competitive programs ready to go, and the shortage of people educated in freedom, Walesa said. Remember that there is no competitive judicial system in a state socialist society.
Freedom's people have to be prepared beforehand with laws on what to do with factories, land, and homes--"for the first parliament." After that, complications grow.
What about the restoration of pre-communist ownership? Walesa said, "in Poland the bombs destroyed many potential problems." Sorting out ownership after many years is a complicated process.
If the communists were really dangerous in Poland, we would oppose them, he said. Some "are the biggest capitalists now. And they will never give the capital back!"
Asked why so few exiles won positions in post-communist Poland, Walesa said, "They talked a lot but did not listen. They shouted at each other...And too few exiles were really involved in the post-communist events."
What ideas did he have on how to upset a dictatorship? Walesa said, "Do what it prohibits! Build groups." He added that not all situations are alike; solutions for one country may not apply to another.
Asked what will happen if the communist, Gennady Zyuganov, wins the presidential race in Russia, Walesa said, he will say one thing but then do another. "I'm going to vote for Yeltsin!"
He also said that in a capitalist country, only one in 10 may really become a capitalist, "so at least nine will be envying him!" Nevertheless, in the former dictatorships and despite many infiltrators, "freedom parties are growing slowly; but they are growing."
He repeated to his listeners, "If you are surprised by freedom, then what can be done?" He said he would love to go to Havana with them, "and I don't want to have to use a cane." Walesa also told the Cuban Americans, "Knowing your temperament, you are warriors--and want to be heroes." He often flashed a smile beneath the greying walrus mustache that is his trademark.
Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain earlier agreed to be the counselor general of the university's Margaret Thatcher School of Democratic Government and spoke here to university friends last year.