“YOU better make your questions interesting. If [they] are boring, I will fall asleep,” came the stern warning of former Polish President Lech Wałęsa at the start of our interview.
Age has definitely not diminished the mustachioed Wałęsa’s fervor, nor his feisty demeanor: the same pugnacious, in-your-face brashness that served him well in his heydays as the labor leader of Solidarity, the Soviet bloc’s first independent trade union.
Ignoring threats to his life and several imprisonments, he led massive demonstrations and dislodged well-entrenched apparatchiks in Communist-ruled Poland.
If Wałęsa had once led a historic revolution that toppled a Communist regime 35 years ago, today in the autumn of his life, he is trying to form another uprising: that of a bloodless one that aims to address the threats of what he calls a “computer revolution.”
“Ours was a great victory, but soon it was over. We threw away the bad system, but now we have to put a new one because we are confronted with a new set of problems,” he intimated during an exclusive discourse with the BusinessMirror in a Makati hotel.
Currently, he said, we lack the structure to confront the challenges of the coming revolution, “and we have to work them out; discuss them among ourselves.”
“In dictatorship, we were forced to do what we have to do. But [now], we have to talk together. Technology is taking us to go beyond the boundaries of our countries,” Wałęsa went on, as he cited the inroads and the accompanying challenges of the new paradigms, such as artificial intelligence, information technology, robotics, computers and globalization.
He referenced today’s global headlines about the purported takeover of robots over many monotonous, repetitive jobs that would throw millions of workers out in the streets. Such would translate to efficient factories, as machines will be replacing humans, which then will result into joblessness.
The former-president of Poland who helped steer his country to a free market economy opined that, instead of allowing technology to dominate us, “it is time to build the foundation for a new, exciting future.”
“What foundation do we have today in rejecting the old foundation? Some like to build based only on freedom, others on values, but everybody has different [sets of] values, different sets of beliefs, different religions,” the former shipyard worker who led Poland’s successful revolt against Soviet communism told this author.
He continued: “Before, the world was divided into two blocs (communism and democracy); today we have to find a new kind of structure. The current system is ineffective because we do not have the structure,” Wałęsa explained, as his arms flailed to drive home his point.
From ‘isms’ to globalization
THE Polish leader added that the world has tried communism, capitalism, democracy, socialism, dictatorship and a host of other “isms” to run their respective countries, “but still there are many jobless citizens, the cities are decaying and people continue to suffer.”
“One era is over; it failed. And now we have globalization, so we have to go with the changes, but we don’t have the [tools]. We are in-between, in the middle. Again, it’s [the] time of the ‘word.’”
“Everybody has a different ‘word,’ that’s why we are ineffective,” he pressed on.
Asked if he has a name for the new system or archetype of what he is trying to promote, Wałęsa, a portly blond speaking with an air of authority, replied enigmatically: “In the beginning was the Word.”
Quoting John the Apostle from the Holy Bible’s New Testament, he said: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Wałęsa emphasized on “The Word,” as he strained to drive home his point, and added that those tasked with running a government, or those with the power to shape the world, should gather together and engage in an exchange of words, in dialogues and in conversations.
“This is necessary so that everybody would agree on how to deal with the new revolution confronting our society,” such as those technologies he pertained to, as he slashed the air to stress his point.
An unapologetic pro-labor leader and not one to spare the evils of capitalism, he commented favorably on those who participated in the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York a few years ago and claimed there would be a “worldwide revolt against capitalism” if the protesters are ignored.
They are objecting to the “unfairness” of an economy that enriches a few and “throws the people to the curb,” Wałęsa told in a Polish television interview.
But most surprising is his grasp of the current state of affairs, which was the favored subject of Thomas Friedman, an American journalist, author and a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner whose best-selling books dealt extensively on topics surrounding foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization and environmental issues.
A ‘new tomorrow’
ALTHOUGH he has retired from politics, Wałęsa has given countless lectures abroad and is regularly invited to speak before CEOs and other industry movers and shakers to share his thoughts on current issues.
He admitted the post-World War II order is all behind us and it is time to move on and confront the realities of a new tomorrow.
“Our era [is] over. It has failed and now we have new ways to gather information. There is globalization [and] there is automation.”
Wałęsa went on: “Globalization is neither good nor bad. It has to be honest, it has to be better, but we haven’t done it yet. We now have the new technologies which cannot be controlled by [any] country’s boundaries.”
Amplifying, he said that when bicycles first came into existence, it enabled people to travel relatively long distances from one place to another, like in Europe. “But now, we have airplanes; we have the Internet. We have something bigger than a country. It is globalization.”
Wałęsa added it is a new development needing new solutions. “We cannot avoid it, we cannot reject it. So, the question is how to do it, how it will be better, how it will be wiser.”
Does he mean, this author asked, that the concept of democracy, which has been practically adopted all over the world, has changed because of these new developments?
“Of course. Democracy is enclosed within its particular country. Each country has a different environment, its own values [and] own religion.”
“Now, when we have something bigger than one country, we have to agree what the foundation is, for [those with] differing religions [and] those who don’t believe at all. That’s why we have too many problems today,” he proceeded.
And the way to confront these problems, he shared, is to dialogue as soon as possible: “This generation has such duties to fulfill. We destroy the previous system, we want to build a new world, but we want to know what we have to build.”
Harking back to when he ousted the iron fist that once gripped his native Poland, he mused: “The dictatorship is no longer there, but what do we put in its place?”
He said today’s democracy does not condone demagoguery, “and populist politicians are simply fooling us. They’re stealing from us, and democracy cannot deal with it. So we have to sit down, we have to discuss how we deal with it.”
Also, “democracy is a beautiful thing, but half of the people do not believe that we should participate in elections. Very few people belong to any particular party, that’s why we’re being cheated.”
Wałęsa explained that because of the way democratic governments are run, only 10 percent of each country’s citizens have properties, but the remaining 90 percent owns the goods and the wealth of the country.
He said this enables the elite to keep their cash in banks or somewhere else and, thus, suggested that instead of being in safes and vaults, that money must “move” or be active.
That way, “you will earn, and we will earn. You cannot keep it [money] hidden somewhere. You’re saying there’s no work, [but] there was no work in the previous time, when the ‘rat race’ prevailed.”
The Polish pope and Manila
WAŁĘSA, who was once accused of siding with the communists he once kicked out of Poland, said that during his time, the world being divided into two blocs was almost dragged into a nuclear war.
He said nobody believed it could be changed and yet, that era saw the ascendance of a Polish pope, Karol Jósef Wojtyla, now revered as Pope Saint John Paul II (called “Saint John Paul the Great” by some Catholics).
“He started moving toward a direction of value, and the laborers put those values into strength, and the world has changed—although many don’t believe it.”
He went further to say, “If today we don’t believe that it’s possible for us, we have to step back and look at the election of the pope. Let’s put the values he talked about. If this is successful for us, we’ll win and we’ll build a different world.”
Commenting on Manila’s traffic as an example of today’s governments unable to manage problems, he noticed our world is currently teeming with people and cars, and is drowning in pollution.
“But they have yet to find a definitive solution to confront those problems. It is because many cities of today were built when the horse and buggy were the [only modes] of transportation.”
On his impressions about Manila: “It is beautiful. It is like many major cities across the world. Every 10 meters there’s a red light, yet we have plenty of traffic because [roads] were not built properly; [they were] built for a different period.”
His solution is to “demolish old cities and build [them] accordingly.”
“There has to be an easy flow of movement in any city. There shouldn’t be any traffic. We are [being] poisoned from pollution.”
Furthermore, he averred, “This is the age of aviation; we rely mostly on jet planes and not bicycles, but we still build cities for the horses and carts.”
Although he agrees that museums and other places of cultural value should be spared, Wałęsa said we have to look far into the future and execute proper actions.
Davos and ‘reality’
ASKED if the Davos annual event of global, political and business elites converging is not enough to answer his concerns and whether those who participated in it are discussing the proper issues, Wałęsa thinks they are “near to the details,” but not on finalizing them: “They are too far away politically; they do not see the unemployed.”
The highest town in the Alps, the municipality of Davos in Switzerland is host to the World Economic Forum, an annual conclave of CEOs, COOs and, in recent years, of prime ministers, presidents and billionaires to discuss their common concerns and how they would affect their country’s economic standings.
Wałęsa added that the Davos talks “are peripherals, but it’s good that they are there to meet, to dialogue because the time will come when they will have to face reality.”
“We’re living in a different period. What do we accept? What do we reject? It’s a new period needing educated people. We need to agree on what to do. People have to find a place, a niche out of this new world.”
Image credits: Jimbo Albano, Alysa Salen