Party of Polish Democracy

Last updated June 23, 2019

The Party of Polish Democracy (Polish : Stronnictwo Demokracji Polskiej, SDP) was a political party in Poland.

Polish is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In addition to being an official language of Poland, it is also used by Polish minorities in other countries. There are over 50 million Polish-language speakers around the world and it is one of the official languages of the European Union.

Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country located in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, covering an area of 312,696 square kilometres (120,733 sq mi), and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With a population of approximately 38.5 million people, Poland is the sixth most populous member state of the European Union. Poland's capital and largest metropolis is Warsaw. Other major cities include Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Szczecin.

History

The party was established in March 1991 as the Polish Christian Democratic Forum (Polskie Forum Chrześcijańsko-Demokratyczne, PFChD) as an initiative of the PAX Association and the Polish Catholic-Social Association. It contested 1991 parliamentary elections as part of the Christian Democracy alliance that won five seats. Tadeusz Lasocki was the party's sole MP.

The PAX Association was a pro-communist Catholic organization created in 1947 in the People's Republic of Poland at the onset of the Stalinist period. The association published the Słowo Powszechne daily for almost fifty years between 1947 and 1993 with an average of 312 issues annually.

The 1991 Polish parliamentary election was held on 27 October 1991 to elect deputies to both houses of the National Assembly. The 1991 election was notable on several counts. It was the first parliamentary election to be held since the formation of the Third Republic, the first entirely free and competitive legislative election since the fall of communism, the first completely free legislative election of any sort since 1928, and only the fifth completely free election in all of Polish history. Due to the collapse of the Solidarity movement's political wing, the 1991 election saw deep political fragmentation, with a multitude of new parties and alliances emerging in its wake. Low voting thresholds within individual constituencies, along with a five percent national threshold allocated to a small portion of the Sejm, additionally contributed to party fragmentation. As a result, 29 political parties gained entry into the Sejm and 22 in the Senate, with no party holding a decisive majority. Two months of intense coalition negotiations followed, with Jan Olszewski of the Centre Agreement forming a minority government along with the Christian National Union, remnants of the broader Center Civic Alliance, and the Peasants' Agreement, with conditional support from Polish People's Party, Solidarity and other minor parties.

Christian Democracy was a political alliance in Poland.

In 1993 the party was renamed the Party of Polish Democracy. It joined the Coalition for the Republic for the parliamentary elections that year, but the alliance failed to win a seat. It was part of Solidarity Electoral Action in the 1997 elections.^[1] It held one of the alliance's 201 seats in the Sejm, with Waldemar Pawłowski being its only MP.

Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 19 September 1993. In Sejm elections, 52.13% of citizens cast their votes, and 95.7% of those were counted as valid. In Senate elections, 52.1% of citizens cast their votes, and 97.07% were valid. The elections were won by the left-wing parties of the Democratic Left Alliance and the Polish People's Party, who formed a coalition together.

Solidarity Electoral Action was a political coalition in Poland. Since 1997 its official name has been Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność Prawicy (AWSP) or Solidarity Electoral Action of the Right. Ruch Społeczny AWS, or Social Movement for Solidarity Electoral Action, was the political arm of the Solidarity trade union and was formerly the leading party within AWS.

Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 21 September 1997. In the Sejm elections, 47.93% of citizens cast their votes, 96.12% of which were counted as valid. In the Senate elections, 46.92% of citizens cast their votes, 97.82% of which were valid.

The party was dissolved in 1999, with most members joining the Christian National Union.

The Christian National Union, abbreviated to ZChN, was a Polish nationalist political party in Poland. Founded on 15 September 1989, the party traced its tradition to the Solidarity movement, as well as pre-war National Democracy and Polish Christian Democratic Party.

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References

↑ Aleksander Andrzej Szczerbiak (1989) The emergence and development of political parties in post-Communist Poland University of London

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[1] Aleksander Andrzej Szczerbiak (1989) The emergence and development of political parties in post-Communist Poland University of London