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Cabinet of Jan Olszewski was the government of Poland from 23 December 1991 to 5 June 1992, [1] sitting in the Council of Ministers during the 1st legislature of the Sejm. Led by lawyer Jan Olszewski, [2] it was supported by the coalition of the Centre Agreement and the Christian National Union as well as the Party of Christian Democrats in the beginning and the Peasants' Agreement at the end. [3]
In autumn, first fully free elections were held. President Lech Wałęsa invited Jan Olszewski to form a government, when formation of government by Bronisław Geremek and attempts to keep Jan Krzysztof Bielecki in office were unsuccessful. [4] The Sejm appointed Olszewski Prime Minister on 6 December. Issues with forming a coalition discouraged Olszewski, who announced his resignation, which was not accepted. [5] Olszewski was supported by Polish People's Party (in exchange for few deputy ministers), whom Jarosław Kaczyński loudly thanked after the voting. After long period of negotiations, on 23 December the government was formed thanks to support of Solidarity and PSL. The government was made up of 4 parties - Centre Agreement and the Christian National Union as well as the Party of Christian Democrats.
Olszewski cabinet worked under new international conditions. At the end of December 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved. This motivated the government to start integration with NATO and European Community. For the first time, in official documents, it was mentioned that membership in NATO is part of Polish defence strategies. Negotiations to withdraw Russian armies from Poland started at the end of October 1990, we speeded up. In March 1992, period of confusion occurred when president Lech Wałęsa presented his conception of new economic and military alliance with former Warsaw Pact during his visit to Germany, which went against the euroatlantic direction of the government.
Olszewski government changed the concept of privatization of national corporations. Total stop of privatization led to open conflict with liberal groups in the parliament.
On 22 May 1992, Jan Olszewski opposed signing of a clause in Polish-Russian Treaty of Friendly and Neighbourly Cooperation, which handed over former Russian military bases to international Polish-Russian corporations. The Prime Minister sent a telegram to Moscow to president Lech Wałęsa informing of government opposition to the clause. Wałęsa, after conversation with Boris Yeltsin changed the controversial clause. However, this did not stop further clashes with the president.
Jan Olszewski cabinet did not hold permanent parliamentary majority. [6] Attempts to extend the coalition, first to Democratic Union, Liberal Democratic Congress and Polish Economic Programme, and then to Confederation of Independent Poland, were unsuccessful. On 24 May 1992, the council of the Democratic Union wrote a report calling the government to resign. On 26 May, Wałęsa sent a formal note to the Marshal of the Sejm, informing of withdrawal of support for the government. On 27 May, the four parties prepared for the vote of no confidence against the government. The following day, the Sejm passed a resolution obligating the Minister of Interior (at the time Antoni Macierewicz), to publish the list of communist secret police collaborators. On 29 May, representative of the Democratic Union, Jan Maria Rokita, presented a vote of no confidence request on the behalf of 65 members of the parliament of the 3 parties. [7] [8] On 2 June, the final day of coalition negotiations with the Confederation of Independent Poland, Macierewicz met with deputy Marshal of that party, informing him that its leader, Leszek Moczulski, was on the list of collaborators which will be presented to the Sejm the following day.
The cabinet was recalled by the Sejm in a voting after the midnight of 5 June 1992, few hours after publishing the list. The Prime Minister supported the decision of Macierewicz, proposing to establish an independent commission to verify the validity of the published documents. The Sejm did not debate this proposal. Wałęsa pressured on the Sejm to speed up the vote of no confidence, sending his own request. [9] [10]
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 president of the Council of Ministers, colloquially and commonly referred to as the prime minister, is the head of the cabinet and the head of government of Poland. The responsibilities and traditions of the office stem from the creation of the contemporary Polish state, and the office is defined in the Constitution of Poland. According to the Constitution, the president nominates and appoints the prime minister, who will then propose the composition of the Cabinet. Fourteen days following their appointment, the prime minister must submit a programme outlining the government's agenda to the Sejm, requiring a vote of confidence. Conflicts stemming from both interest and powers have arisen between the offices of President and Prime Minister in the past.
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 to defuse growing social unrest.
Lech Aleksander Kaczyński was a Polish politician who served as the city mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 2005, and as President of Poland from 2005 until his death in 2010. Before his tenure as president, he previously served as President of the Supreme Audit Office from 1992 to 1995 and later Minister of Justice and Public Prosecutor General in Jerzy Buzek's cabinet from 2000 until his dismissal in July 2001.
Jan Ferdynand Olszewski was a Polish conservative lawyer and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Poland for five months between December 1991 and early June 1992 and later became a leading figure of the conservative Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland.
Waldemar Pawlak is a Polish politician. He has twice served as Prime Minister of Poland, briefly in 1992 and again from 1993 to 1995. From November 2007 to November 2012 he served as Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Economy. Pawlak remains Poland's youngest prime minister to date.
Hanna Stanisława Suchocka is a Polish political figure, lawyer, professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Chair of the Constitutional Law Department, former First Vice-President and Honorary President of the Venice Commission.
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.
Presidential elections were held in Poland on 5 November 1995, with a second round on 19 November. The leader of Social Democracy, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, and incumbent President Lech Wałęsa advanced to the second round. Kwaśniewski won the election with 52% of the vote in the run-off against 48% for Wałęsa.
Jan Krzysztof Bielecki is a Polish liberal politician and economist. A leading figure of the Gdańsk-based Liberal Democratic Congress in the early 1990s, Bielecki served as Prime Minister of Poland for most of 1991. In his post-political career, Bielecki served as president of Bank Pekao between 2003 and 2010, and served as the president of the Polish Institute of International Affairs between 2009 and 2015. Since the early 2000s, Bielecki has been a member of the Civic Platform party. In 2010, the Warsaw Business Journal described Bielecki as one of the most respected economists in Poland.
Antoni Macierewicz is a Polish politician and the former Minister of National Defence. He previously served as the Minister of Internal Affairs, Head of the Military Counterintelligence Service, and Minister of State in the Ministry of National Defence.
The Citizens' Movement for Democratic Action was a political faction in Poland coalescing several members of the Solidarity Citizens' Committee.
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; further, 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.
Andrzej Bohdan Celiński is a Polish politician. Until 1989 activist of the democratic opposition in Poland. Former Member of Senate and Sejm. Minister of Culture in the government of Prime Minister Leszek Miller (2001-2002).
Waldemar Pawlak was the only person to serve twice as Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland during the Third Republic period (1989–present) prior to the re-election of Donald Tusk in 2023.
The Cabinet of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, led by Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, came to power following the 1989 legislative election. He was nominated by the President as the Prime Minister on 24 August 1989 in order to form a new government after the Sejm rejected the Communist cabinet of Czesław Kiszczak, and subsequently obtained the mandatory motion of confidence in the Sejm on 12 September 1989. The cabinet resigned on 25 November 1990, and the Sejm accepted the resignation of the cabinet on 14 December, though it continued to perform its duties until the formation of the Cabinet of Jan Krzysztof Bielecki on 4 January 1991.
The Polish Union, also known as the Regional Agreement RdR in 1993, was a Christian-democratic centre-right political party in Poland. The party was founded by defectors from Polish Christian-democratic party Movement for the Republic, who left the party over the dispute regarding forming a possible coalition with Centre Agreement, the party that Movement for the Republic was itself a split from. Shortly after being formed, the Polish Union announced an electoral union with the Centre Agreement in June 1993, known as Centre Agreement – Polish Union.
The Third Republic Movement was a minor conservative political party in Poland functioning between 1992 and 1995, when it united with the Movement for the Republic to form the Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland.
The Centre Agreement – Integrative Initiative was a Christian-democratic political party in Poland. It was founded by the former secretary and member of the executive board of Centre Agreement (PC) Wojciech Dobrzyński, who was stripped of his functions on 5 October 1994, and then expelled from the party by Jarosław Kaczyński in January 1995. Kaczyński expelled Dobrzyński over his willigness to cooperate with the right-wing Christian National Union, a party that wanted to create an All-Polish electoral alliance that would unite all right-leaning parties in Poland but exclude the PC.
