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.
The Democratic Party, abbreviated to PD, was a minor social-liberal political party in Poland. It had no members of the Sejm, Senate, or European Parliament.
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.
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.
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.
Znak was an association of lay Catholics in Poland, active between 1956 and 1976. It was the only Catholic organisation that was tolerated by the communist Polish United Workers' Party and supported the Catholic hierarchy.
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.
The Nonpartisan Bloc for Support of Reforms was an officially nonpartisan organization affiliated with Lech Wałęsa. It was established in 1993 and in 1997 became part of Solidarity Electoral Action.
Stanisław "Stan" Tymiński is a Canadian businessman of Polish origin, dealing in electronics and computers, and a sometime-politician in both Poland and Canada. Although Tymiński was born in Pruszków, he was a completely unknown person in his native Poland until shortly before the 1990 presidential election, he emerged from the first ballot as the second strongest candidate; defeating liberal prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and forcing Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa to stand a second ballot. After Wałęsa defeated him by a wide margin, Tymiński was a leader of Party X in Poland (1990–1995) and then returned to Canada to resume his business activities. Tymiński also contested the 2005 Polish presidential election.
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.
The Democratic Union was a liberal Christian-democratic party in Poland. The party was founded in 1991 by Prime Minister, Christian Democrat Tadeusz Mazowiecki as a merger of the Citizens' Movement for Democratic Action and the Forum of Right Democrats.
The Solidarity Citizens' Committee, also known as Citizens' Electoral Committee and previously named the Citizens' Committee with Lech Wałęsa, was an initially semi-legal political organisation of the democratic opposition in Communist Poland.
The Citizens' Movement for Democratic Action was a political faction in Poland coalescing several members of the Solidarity Citizens' Committee.
The Alliance of Democrats is a Polish centre-left party. Initially formed in 1937, the party underwent a revival in 2009, when it was joined by liberal politician Paweł Piskorski, formerly a member of the Civic Platform.
Parliamentary elections were held in Poland in 1989 to elect members of the Sejm and the recreated Senate. The first round took place on 4 June with a second round on 18 June. They were the first elections in the country since the Communist Polish United Workers Party abandoned its monopoly of power in April 1989.
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 2001, 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.
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.
