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 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.
The Polish Round Table Talks took place in Warsaw, Communist 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.
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.
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. The party was established in 1993, and became part of Solidarity Electoral Action in 1997.
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 country until shortly before the 1990 Polish 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 Freedom Union was a liberal democratic political party 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 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 Agreement 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 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 Labour Party is a minor political party in Poland. It was formally called the Christian-Democratic Labour Party(Polish: Chrześcijańsko-Demokratyczne Stronnictwo Pracy, ChDSP) between 1989 and 2000. The party continued the traditions of the pre-war Labor Party, which ceased its activities in Poland in 1946. This made the party be considered a historical formation, together with the Polish Socialist Party.
Cabinet of Jan Olszewski was the government of Poland from 23 December 1991 to 5 June 1992, sitting in the Council of Ministers during the 1st legislature of the Sejm. Led by lawyer Jan Olszewski, 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.
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.
