History, Democratic Poland

In 1990 Solidarity split into two opposing groups, with one group supporting Walesa and the other supporting Mazowiecki. In November Walesa, Mazowiecki, and a maverick emigre millionaire, Stanislaw Tyminski, ran in a presidential election. Mazowiecki was eliminated on the first ballot while Walesa won the runoff against Tyminski. Walesa was unclear about how to define his office, however. This led to an ambiguous distribution of presidential, prime ministerial, and parliamentary powers in Poland’s transitional “Little Constitution,” adopted in 1992. Post-Communist Poland thus suffered from a confused, unstable, and conflict-ridden political process. Proportional representation adopted for the 1991 election produced a Sejm composed of a dozen significant political parties. Between 1991 and 1993 Poland was governed by a succession of short-lived parliamentary coalitions.

Poland established or renewed diplomatic relations with the European Community (now the European Union), the republics of the former USSR, the Vatican, and Israel, and signed cooperation treaties with the newly unified Germany and a number of other European states. The country joined the Council of Europe and negotiated associate membership of the European Union. Full national sovereignty was regained in 1992 with the evacuation of most of the Soviet troops stationed in Poland. The withdrawal was completed in August 1993.

The September 1993 elections simplified the party system by excluding all but the six parties who succeeded in gaining the minimum electoral threshold of 5 percent of the vote (8 percent for coalitions). The Communists’ successor parties, including the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (SdRP) and the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), benefited from popular dissatisfaction with the socioeconomic costs of the transformation and gained a large majority. Waldemar Pawlak, the PSL leader, became prime minister, but his government was harassed by Walesa and accused of trying to slow economic reform. In early 1995, Walesa threatened to dissolve parliament if the Pawlak government was not replaced. Betraying his intention to position himself for the 1995 presidential election, Walesa nominated a likely election opponent, Aleksander Kwasniewski, for the position of prime minister. He was overruled by parliament and Jozef Oleksy, a member of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and former Communist, was eventually nominated. Amid this atmosphere Pawlak’s government lost a vote of confidence. Pawlak resigned as prime minister on March 1 and was replaced by Oleksy.

In the presidential election held in November 1995, Walesa, who had discredited himself among the Poles through his personal failings and political mistakes, was unseated by Kwasniewski, a former Communist and the founder and leader of the SLD. Kwasniewski pledged to continue the process of economic reform and to seek full membership for Poland in the EU and NATO. In a move intended to help heal the political rifts resulting from the election, Kwasniewski resigned from the SLD later that month.

In January 1996 Prime Minister Oleksy resigned in the face of a formal investigation into allegations that he had been spying for Russia for more than a decade. Oleksy, Poland’s seventh prime minister since the collapse of Communism, had once served in the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Although he admitted to having a friendship with a Russian intelligence agent who had been stationed in Warsaw since the 1980s, Oleksy denied the espionage charges and declared his innocence. Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, also of the SLD, replaced Oleksy as prime minister in February. In April the military prosecutor investigating the charges against Oleksy decided to drop the case due to insufficient evidence of criminal activity.

In October 1996 the Sejm voted not to charge Jaruzelski and other former Communist officials with constitutional violations in connection with the imposition of martial law in 1981.

In 1997 a special parliamentary commission, dominated by former Communists, completed the task of drafting a new constitution. Following parliamentary approval of the document in April, a nationwide referendum was held in May in which 52.7 percent of voters approved the new constitution. A coalition of right-wing groups associated with Solidarity and some Catholics strongly opposed its passage, claiming some of its provisions were overly secular. A synthesis of seven competing versions, the 243-article charter delineates the powers of the presidency, guarantees basic civil rights, ensures civilian control over the armed forces, and commits the country to a market economy and private ownership of enterprise.

In October 1997 the conservative Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) and the pro-business Freedom Union (UW) formed a coalition government after winning a combined majority of seats in both the Sejm and the Senat in elections the previous month. Kwasniewski appointed Jerzy Buzek, a former Solidarity activist in the 1980s and an AWS legislator, as prime minister. A liberal reformer, Buzek pledged to accelerate the privatization of state-owned industries and to decentralize government power. In December 1997 the EU invited Poland to begin the process of becoming a full member.

In July 1998 the Polish government approved a plan to slash the number of provinces from 49 to 16, and to invest each province’s elected officials with more authority. The administrative reform, which took effect on January 1, 1999, was part of Poland's efforts to bring its laws and procedures in line with EU standards for admission. Government leaders celebrated Poland’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in March, about two years after it was invited into the historically western alliance.

The Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) emerged as the largest party in the September 2001 national election and it formed a coalition government with the Polish Peasant Party (PSL). Leszek Miller, SLD leader and a former member of the Polish Communist Party’s Central Committee, became prime minister in October. Miller vowed to reduce Poland’s growing budget deficit and to win membership for Poland in the EU. The election was a stunning defeat for the Solidarity-led AWS, which was ousted from parliament after failing to win the minimum 8 percent of the vote required for coalitions.