Indirect presidential elections were held in Poland on 19 July 1989. The elections were the first after the office of President of the Republic of Poland had been re-established after a period of Communist rule and were the last in which the President was elected by Parliament (joint houses of the Sejm and Senate). Despite adoption of the democratic system there was only one candidate.
After the Round Table Agreement, which resulted in a semi-free parliamentary election, marked by effective Solidarity victory and de facto loss of the Polish United Workers' Party, on July 4, 1989, Adam Michnik proposed a power-sharing deal between communist and the democratic opposition (Your President, our Prime Minister), according to which Chairman of the Council of State and Communist leader Wojciech Jaruzelski would become president and a solidarity representative Prime Minister (this position indeed went to Tadeusz Mazowiecki in August). After much debate within both camps this conception won.
Jaruzelski ran unopposed, but won by just a one-vote majority needed, as many Solidarity MPs, while supporting the agreement, felt just unable to cast their votes or, to not disturb the process, cast abstain or invalid votes.
Solidarity Electoral Action was a coalition of political parties in Poland, active from 1996 to 2001. AWS was the political arm of the Solidarity trade union, whose leader Lech Wałęsa, was President of Poland from 1990 to 1995, and the successor of the parties emerged from the fragmentation of the Solidarity Citizens' Committee.
The Polish United Workers' Party, commonly abbreviated to PZPR, was the communist party which ruled the Polish People's Republic as a one-party state from 1948 to 1989. The PZPR had led two other legally permitted subordinate minor parties together as the Front of National Unity and later Patriotic Movement for National Rebirth. Ideologically, it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism, with a strong emphasis on left-wing nationalism. The Polish United Workers' Party had total control over public institutions in the country as well as the Polish People's Army, the UB and SB security agencies, the Citizens' Militia (MO) police force and the media.
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski was a Polish military general, politician and de facto leader of the Polish People's Republic from 1981 until 1989. He was the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party between 1981 and 1989, making him the last leader of the Polish People's Republic. Jaruzelski served as Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985, the Chairman of the Council of State from 1985 to 1989 and briefly as President of Poland from 1989 to 1990, when the office of President was restored after 37 years. He was also the last commander-in-chief of the Polish People's Army, which in 1990 became the Polish Armed Forces.
A national unity government, government of national unity (GNU), or national union government is a broad coalition government consisting of all parties in the legislature, usually formed during a time of war or other national emergency. A unity government according to the principles of consensus democracy lacks opposition, or opposition parties are too small and negligible.
From 1989 through 1991, Poland engaged in a democratic transition which put an end to the Polish People's Republic and led to the foundation of a democratic government, known as the Third Polish Republic, following the First and Second Polish Republic. After ten years of democratic consolidation, Poland joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union on 1 May 2004.
The Polish Round Table Talks took place in Warsaw, Poland from 6 February to 5 April 1989. The government initiated talks with the banned trade union Solidarność and other opposition groups in an attempt to defuse growing social unrest.
Tadeusz Mazowiecki was a Polish author, journalist, philanthropist and politician, formerly one of the leaders of the Solidarity movement, and the first non-communist Polish prime minister since 1946, having held the post from 1989 to 1991.
Presidential elections were held in Poland on 25 November 1990, with a second round on 9 December. They were the first direct presidential elections in the history of Poland, and the first free presidential elections since the May Coup of 1926. Before World War II, presidents were elected by the Sejm. From 1952 to 1989—the bulk of the Communist era—the presidency did not exist as a separate institution, and most of its functions were fulfilled by the State Council of Poland, whose chairman was considered the equivalent of a president.
Presidential elections were held in Poland on 8 October 2000. Incumbent President Aleksander Kwaśniewski was easily re-elected in the first round with more than 50% of the vote, the only time a direct presidential election in Poland has not gone to a second round.
Zbigniew Stefan Messner was a Polish communist politician and economist. His ancestors were of German Polish descent who had assimilated into Polish society. In 1972, he became Professor of Karol Adamiecki University of Economics in Katowice. In the 1980s, Messner held numerous high ranking posts within communist party apparatus. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) from 1981 to 1990, when PZPR was dissolved, member of the PZPR Politburo from 1981 to 1988, Deputy Prime Minister from 1983 to 1985, member of Sejm from 1985 to 1989, Prime Minister of Polish People's Republic from 1985 to 1988 and member of the State Council of the Polish People's Republic from 1988 to 1989. Additionally in the 1960s Messner was the chairman of Piast Gliwice football club.
Poland has a multi-party political system. On the national level, Poland elects the head of state – the president – and a legislature. There are also various local elections, referendums and elections to the European Parliament.
The history of Poland from 1945 to 1989 spans the period of Marxist–Leninist regime in Poland after the end of World War II. These years, while featuring general industrialization, urbanization and many improvements in the standard of living,[a1] were marred by early Stalinist repressions, social unrest, political strife and severe economic difficulties. Near the end of World War II, the advancing Soviet Red Army, along with the Polish Armed Forces in the East, pushed out the Nazi German forces from occupied Poland. In February 1945, the Yalta Conference sanctioned the formation of a provisional government of Poland from a compromise coalition, until postwar elections. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, manipulated the implementation of that ruling. A practically communist-controlled Provisional Government of National Unity was formed in Warsaw by ignoring the Polish government-in-exile based in London since 1940.
Czesław Jan Kiszczak was a Polish general, communist-era interior minister (1981–1990) and prime minister (1989).
The Citizens' Movement for Democratic Action was a political faction in Poland coalescing several members of the Solidarity Citizens' Committee.
Communism in Poland can trace its origins to the late 19th century: the Marxist First Proletariat party was founded in 1882. Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania party and the publicist Stanisław Brzozowski (1878–1911) were important early Polish Marxists.
Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 4 June 1989 to elect members of the Sejm and the recreated Senate, with a second round on 18 June. They were the first elections in the country since the communist government abandoned its monopoly of power in April 1989 and the first elections in the Eastern Bloc that resulted in the communist government losing power.
The Centre Agreement was a Christian-democratic political party in Poland. It was established in 1990 and had its roots in the Solidarity trade union and its political arm, the Solidarity Citizens' Committee. Its main leader was Jarosław Kaczyński. The party was initially the party of choice of Polish president Lech Wałęsa and heavily cooperated with him and his environment between 1990 and 1992, leading the first post-communist governments. In 1991, Jan Olszewski from Centre Agreement gained the support of Wałęsa for his candidacy for Prime Minister, forming a PC-led government. However, the government was mired with internal conflicts in 1992 and fell to a vote of no confidence. Afterwards, the party was increasingly marginalized and became a part of Solidarity Electoral Action in 1997. In 1999 the bigger faction of the party left to the newly created Polish Christian Democratic Agreement, while in 2001 the leadership of the party dissolved Centre Agremeent to found Law and Justice, the direct successor of the party. However, it wouldn't be until a year later that it would dissolve.
Solidarity, a Polish non-governmental trade union, was founded on August 14, 1980, at the Lenin Shipyards by Lech Wałęsa and others. In the early 1980s, it became the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country. Solidarity gave rise to a broad, non-violent, anti-Communist social movement that, at its height, claimed some 9.4 million members. It is considered to have contributed greatly to the Fall of Communism.
Lech Wałęsa is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the president of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democratically elected president of Poland since 1926 and the first-ever Polish president elected by popular vote. A shipyard electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the Solidarity movement and led a successful pro-democratic effort, which in 1989 ended Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.
John Roger Davis Jr. is a retired American diplomat. From 1988 to 1990, he served as the United States Ambassador to Poland, where he helped guide Solidarity, and Poland, in its quest for free elections. Later, from 1992 to 1994, he served as the United States Ambassador to Romania.
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