Over 200 guests turned up at a Gdańsk restaurant at the weekend for a birthday party for former president Lech Wałęsa, who will be sixty seven on Wednesday.

“All that I need is good health.  I’ll take care of all the rest myself. I don’t feel too well, though, worse than 20 years ago…”  Wałęsa said.

Deputy Speaker of Parliament Stefan Niesiołowski raised a toast to the former leader of the Solidarity movement and wished him “good health more than anything else. And ignore all attempts to undermine your achievements.” 

Niesiołowski added that all efforts to wipe out Wałęsa’s name from the history of Poland are bound to be in vain.

Jerzy Borowczak, one of the initiators of the 1980 Gdansk Shipyard strike and who brought a bottle of Chilean wine as a present, echoed Niesiołowski’s words, saying that good health is the most important for Wałęsa.

“He works a lot, all the time.  He has to remain in good shape to help Poland and Polish democracy because one cannot think of political life in Gdansk and Poland without Lech Wałęsa,” Borowczak said.

Wałęsa’s son, Jarosław, who is member of the European Parliament, said that his birthday wish for his father was to “spend less time at the computer he is an Internet addict,” Jarosław confessed.

Among those present at the birthday party were cabinet ministers, Wałęsa’s former aides, Solidarity leaders of the 1980s as well as former communist party officials who negotiated the agreements that paved the way for the establishment of Solidarity. (mk)