Presidential elections were held in Poland on 25 November 1990, with a second round on 9 December.[1] 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.
There were six candidates who successfully managed to register - Solidarity chairman Lech Wałęsa, Canadian entrepreneur Stanisław Tymiński, Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Members of the Sejm Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz and Roman Bartoszcze, and anti-communist oppositionist Leszek Moczulski. Despite for a long time coming first in opinion polls, Tadeusz Mazowiecki's campaign failed to convince voters to his side, and he did not enter the runoff, coming third in the first round. Stanisław Tymiński came second in a large upset unforeseen by every political force in the country, and, being seen by other candidates as a liar and opportunist, managed to unite both the postcommunist and Solidarity establishments against him. In the second round, Wałęsa won almost 75% of voters, being the largest landslide electoral victory in Polish political history.[2][3]
Following the Polish Round Table Agreement, universal parliamentary elections were held in Poland. They were the first free elections since 1928, and began the era of democratic and free market[a] reforms in Poland, as the power of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) began quickly disintegrating - early next year, the party would dissolve, succeeded by the Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland (SdRP), where most of the communist party's wealth was controversially transferred, and the short-lived Polish Social Democratic Union.[4]
The last attempts at salvaging power by the PZPR was the appointment of Czesław Kiszczak as Prime Minister, who was first assigned the mission of forming a new government with 237 votes (and 173 against), but later, after a defection from ZSL and SD, his proposed government failed to receive the Sejm's confidence.[5] Instead, Solidarity compromised with the communists in a historic compromise, wherein PZPR Chairman Wojciech Jaruzelski would be elected to the newly created position of President, while a Solidarity-aligned candidate - Tadeusz Mazowiecki - would become Prime Minister.[2]
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The concept of the execution of such compromise was controversial within Solidarity. Liberal and left-leaning[6] members like Bronisław Geremek, Jacek Kuroń, Władysław Frasyniuk or Adam Michnik wanted to create a grand coalition with reformist wing of PZPR. However, the right-leaning faction, led by Lech Wałęsa, and the Kaczyńscy brothers - Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński wanted to instead create coalition with PZPR's satellite parties - the ZSL and SD. The former group formed the Citizens' Movement for Democratic Action faction, and the latter, the Centre Agreement group.
On 7 August, Wałęsa denounced Kiszczak's mission, and declared that the Citizens' Parliamentary Club (OKP), Solidarity's parliamentary club, will be working with ZSL and SD to form a new government. On the 8th and 9th, Geremek and his allies denounced Wałęsa's decision during meetings of Solidarity's leadership and the OKP respectively. However, Wałęsa did not change his decision, and on 24 August, ZSL and SD rejected Kiszczak, instead throwing their support behind Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who formed a Solidarity-ZSL-SD coalition.
In his pursuit of becoming Poland's strongman President during the transition to democracy, Wałesa set several requirements - most importantly that the Prime Minister be younger and less politically experienced than him. Despite meeting both, Mazowiecki quickly turned out to be the polar opposite of what PC desired. Setting aside anti-communism and embracing reformism, he quickly distanced himself from the Centre Agreement and sought to collaborate with ROAD and the Forum of the Democratic Right (FPD).[2]
On 27 July 1990, the leaders of PC began collecting signatures for a petition aimed at President Jaruzelski, appealing for him to resign and for new indirect presidential elections to be held, with the intention of electing Lech Wałęsa. The petition was opposed by ROAD and FPD, who instead aimed at holding direct presidential elections later in the year. Jaruzelski, knowing the end of his term was near, asked Sejm Marshal Mikołaj Kozakiewicz to call a direct presidential election whenever the concrete date of the election was established.[2]
The Sejm voted to shorten the term of Jaruzelski's Presidency on 21 September. On 27 September, the Parliament passed a constitutional amendment, which defined the criteria for a presidential candidate (and president) and defined the elections by the five-point electoral law (wybory pięcioprzymitonikowe (Polish)) - the elections must be secret, direct, equal, universal and proportional, and on 2 October, the precise dates of the electoral process were defined, as the election was called by Sejm Marshal Kozakiewicz.[7]
It was required to get 100,000 signatures to run in the election. Only six managed to get past the threshold of signatures - Lech Wałęsa, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Roman Bartoszcze, Leszek Moczulski and an unknown Canadian entrepreneur,[3] Stanisław Tymiński.
The conflict between Wałęsa and Mazowiecki grew irrenconcilable by late 1990. After several failed attempts at reconciliation and political clashes over positions in the Solidarity movement and trade union, the final attempts at finding a compromise for the presidential election were organized by clergy of the Catholic Church. One was held on 7 July, another on 31 August, where Mazowiecki tried and failed to convince Wałęsa to abandon his presidential ambitions, even promising to field a compromise candidate (presumably Senate Marshal Andrzej Stelmachowski). A last chance at conciliation took place on 18 September, during a meeting with Primate Józef Glemp. Ultimately, the two adversaries from Solidarity ran opposing campaigns - Wałęsa was endorsed by the Centre Agreement, and Mazowiecki by the Citizens' Movement for Democratic Action and Forum of the Democratic Right. The Solidarity movement mostly sided with Wałesa during the election.[2]
The incumbent President of Poland, Wojciech Jaruzelski, polled to receive 18.5% and 16.6% of the vote if he had run again in May 1989 and May 1990 respectively. Others from the old communist party, like Władysław Baka or Tadeusz Fiszbach were also polled to win 2.7% and 1.9% (Baka), and 1.7% in 1990 (Fiszbach) respectively.[8] However, SdRP sought to modernize its image away from the nomenklatura, and the speculated candidates were reaching the end points of their careers regardless. The General Secretary of SdRP, Leszek Miller, at first endorsed the nonpartisan Ombudsman Ewa Łętowska to be the party's candidate. However, she rejected the offer. As such, Miller endorsed SdRP chairman and future President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who also rejected, knowing he would lose in a landslide and likely undermine his position in the party by doing so. Kwaśniewski controversially chose to endorse Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz instead, who was the leader of SdRP's parliamentary club. The Supreme Council of the party held a vote which confirmed Cimoszewicz's nomination, and he became the official candidate of the party in the presidential election.[2]
On 10 October, the Supreme Executive Committee of PSL declared the candidacy of party chairman Roman Bartoszcze. However, Bartoszcze, as an anti-communist oppositionist, was disliked by the postcommunist ex-ZSL wing of the party. As such, the parliamentary club of PSL, which was seated mostly by members from the ZSL wing, declared ZSL activist Józef Zych's candidacy on 11 October. The next day, the crisis was resolved, as the Supreme Council of PSL confirmed Bartoszcze's candidacy, which believed that voters would be much more likely to support a candidate which did not derive from the communist establishment.[2]
In August 1990, the KPN was split, with ~300 of its ~1500 members seceding, forming the Confederation of Independent Poland – Democratic Faction (Polish: Konfederacja Polski Niepodległej – Frakcja Demokratyczna, KPN-FD), accusing KPN's leader Leszek Moczulski of authoritarian rule over the party. When elections were called, whereas KPN-FD endorsed Wałęsa outright, KPN offered to endorse Wałęsa, on several conditions: for Wałesa to support an instant resignation of President Jaruzelski, immediate withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Poland and condemn the Balcerowicz Plan. Ultimately, with Wałęsa not fitting the conditions, Leszek Moczulski decided to himself run in the election.[9] With 111 thousand out of 100 thousand required signatures, he managed to pass the threshold to run.[2]
Stanisław Tymiński was a Canadian-Peruvian entrepreneur born in Poland, who returned to Poland to contest the presidential elections. He was the only candidate without any political party's backing who managed to cross the threshold of 100,000 signatures needed to contest the elections, in the meanwhile mass-distributing his political manifesto, "Sacred dogs".[2]
The following candidates registered to run, but failed to cross the threshold of 100,000 signatures required to run in the election:[10]
While most voters generally believed the candidates they backed would do best to solve most of the country's issues, there were two major outliers - ~40% of voters believed Bartoszcze would best fix the country's agricultural problems, compared to his 7.15% general vote share, and ~20% of voters believed Moczulski would best deal with the communist nomenklatura and withdrawal from the Eastern bloc, compared to his 2.50% vote share.[11]
Mazowiecki's starting situation was rather unfavorable. Despite holding control over TVP, the Polish national television, his team were inept and at utilizing such a vital campaign organ (which would provide tremendous help to every consecutive presidential candidate which controlled it).[2] It was also indecisive, and the decision of experienced campaign staff was often overriden or contested by proper politicians with a higher authority serving in the team.[12] Though well-respected, the public perceived Mazowiecki as uncharismatic,[13][14] and his lack of oratory skills, combined with his preoccupation serving as Prime Minister,[12] led to him massively limiting his public appearances. In light of these obstacles, Mazowiecki tried to deemphasize the importance of his own persona, instead elevating his electoral platform, a strategy that found little appeal outside of intelligentsia circles (which already overwhelmingly supported him). A defining symbol of Mazowiecki's personal isolation was an advertisement his team aired at the beginning of the campaign, presenting him walking around a park, surrounded by bodyguards. In contrast, Wałesa's image was quite overt - Solidarity's chairman held dozens of rallies, meetings and other public events, his persona was charming, characterized as a "plebeian tribune", a "sheriff" bringing communists to justice, promising to directly overlook everything that needed resolution - such a persona enjoyed much public popularity.[2] Tymiński's campaign, that completely faltered at the start, blossomed after TVP began the period of airing campaign ads. His advertisements, which in a simple fasion criticized the government and proposed a "real alternative". The advertisements were so effective that even in an entire voivodeship where Tymiński's campaign had no presence, he had received the largest number of votes of any candidate in the first round. However, that did not mean Tymiński did not campaign in other ways - he held several rallies where he tried to expand his appeal to certain groups.[2]
The Prime Minister's presidential campaign oriented around defending and lauding his accomplishments - notably beginning the economic transformation, signing a treaty with Germany that put an end to fears of Germany pursuing reclamation of its pre-war borders - and convincing undecideds to see the reforms positively. However, his campaign had very little in terms of actual election promises. Meanwhile, Wałesa promised to soften the mass privatization schemes of Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz which was largely responsible for perpetually increasing poverty and unemployment and give every Pole a "hundred million (old) złotys" to let citizens better participate in the economic restructuring. Despite his campaign team writing a formal electoral program titled "New beginning", Wałęsa did not stick to it, and later admitted he did not even read it.[2] Wałesa did not, however, promise to solve every problem, unlike Tymiński, whose extreme promises became a major point of success among the increasing crowds of citizens dissatisfied with the new rule of Solidarity.[2]
At later points of the campaign, Mazowiecki's campaign turned rather negative, disorienting his own voterbase and hurting his image, and began airing advertisements showing Wałesa amputating Poland from western Europe with an axe, or with said axe destroying an alarm clock which had previously been repaired by presumably Mazowiecki.[2] Wałęsa's response to such advertisements was to air his own, notably a cartoon in which, wielding the same axe, he destroyed the "thick stroke"[b] and chased away red spiders, signifying communists. Mazowiecki's ally, Gazeta Wyborcza editor-in-chief Adam Michnik, presented Wałesa as a dangerous strongman who would introduce a "catastrophic, Peronist-esque regime".[6] In some circles, Mazowiecki was accused of secretly having Jewish ancestry, a notion which he rejected and condemned.[15] Meanwhile, Wałęsa insinuated Mazowiecki led an inactive, elite government that prided itself in the prestige of governance alone, contrasting it with proposed his model of real societal intervention.[2]
Mazowiecki, with his fatally operated campaign, quickly declined in opinion polls. Despite them showing Mazowiecki continuously declining, Mazowiecki's team was in denial that they had fallen behind Wałęsa (who by November polled 10 points ahead of the Prime Minister). His fall was so severe that he had fallen even behind Tymiński - who was considered such a nonfactor that Mazowiecki's team only took him into account after Tymiński accused him of treason during a rally a mere week before election day.[2]
On 25 November, the first round of voting took place. In an upset victory, Mazowiecki failed to enter the second round, falling five percentage points behind Tymiński. The results were as follows: Wałęsa - 39.96%, Tymiński - 23.10%, Mazowiecki - 18.08%, Cimoszewicz - 9.21%, Bartoszcze - 7.15%, Moczulski - 2.50%. The day after the election, Mazowiecki, humiliated, announced that he would soon be resigning from the office of Prime Minister, which he did on 12 January next year.
After the announcement of the results, Wałęsa received a large array of endorsements from the majority of his former opponents - on 28 November, OKP formally endorsed Wałęsa's candidacy. On November 30, the Catholic Church in Poland, which did not directly endorse any candidate beforehand, finally chose to endorse Wałęsa. On 1 and 2 December, ROAD and then Mazowiecki begrudgingly endorsed him as well. PSL and KPN also endorsed him - only Cimoszewicz, who represented the postcommunist camp, did not support either candidate.[2]
Tymiński attempted to extend his appeal towards Mazowiecki's and Cimoszewicz's liberal and leftist voters. His attempts at broadening his voterbase, like opposing anti-abortion laws, or praising President Jaruzelski and the period of martial law, contradicted his previous statements about his deep belief in Catholic social teaching, and targeted the intelligentsia environment which were not receptive to his overall populist image in general. Tymiński's momentum, which rose extremely quickly, also seemed to reach its peak at the beginning of the second round.[2]
On 1 December, a pseudo-debate, which took form of a joint press conference where the candidates were free to talk with each other, took place. Tymiński appeared with a black briefcase, claiming it contained incriminating evidence against Wałesa, who replied by ordering Tymiński to show the evidence, assuming Tymiński was bluffing. Tymiński, who did not open the briefcase, proved the clear loser of the debate. A legitimate debate planned for the next day was cancelled when Tymiński refused to take part, his image being damaged enough in the previous debate.[2]
TVP released material in a smear campaign against Tymiński on 4 December, pinning several allegations against him, among which, that he abused his wife and children. Several years after the campaign, Tymiński won a lawsuit against TVP for defamation, but at that point the election had already been long over.[2]
On 9 December, the second round of the presidential election took place, in which Wałesa won in a landslide victory of 74.25%, compared to Tymiński's 25.75%, which was the largest landslide in the history of Polish elections.
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Prime Minister Mazowiecki, utterly humiliated, resigned from his office soon after the election. His successor, Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, was another liberal, who was again selected by the criteria Wałęsa set out for any possible Prime Ministers - to be younger and less experienced politically. Bielecki, though not significantly changing the course of the country, was more subservient to the now-President and his vision.[2]
ROAD and FPD were devastated by Mazowiecki's loss. In May 1991, they united into the Democratic Union (UD) (with a small social-democratic splinter forming the Democratic-Social Movement). UD contested the 1991 parliamentary election, becoming the biggest party in the Sejm with 62 seats until a splinter led by former FPD members.[9]
President-elect Wałęsa resigned from his role as Chairman of the Solidarity trade union shortly after becoming president, endorsing Lech Kaczyński to become the new chairman of the trade union. He faced the liberal-aligned Bogdan Borusewicz and relatively nonpartisan Marian Krzaklewski. On the 3rd Congress of Solidarity on 22-25 February, despite Wałesa's endorsement, Kaczyński lost the vote for union leadership to Krzaklewski, who would become an important politician for the duration of the next decade.[2]
Starting in January 1991,[9] Roman Bartoszcze's position within PSL began dissipating. His period as chairman concluded when after controversially signing a cooperation agreement with Rural Solidarity and PSL "Solidarity", party leadership decided to oust him and replace him with Waldemar Pawlak, who would become a future Prime Minister. Bartoszcze's ousting led to him creating a new party, the Polish People's Christian Forum "Fatherland", which had significantly less success than PSL and never won any seats in any election.[2]
Leszek Moczulski, who used the presidential election to spread his agenda and promulgate his party, succeeded in his goals, as KPN won 7.5% of the vote in the following 1991 parliamentary election, three times as much as he had personally amassed in the presidential election. However, the low result itself was a point of disappointment for Moczulski and his party.[2]
Tymiński became largely irrelevant following the election, sometimes appearing in elections as a perennial candidate. He founded a political party, which was vehemently opposed by a large sector of society - 38% supported its delegalization.[21] In 1991, its candidates were disqualified in 90% of districts,[22] and would only secure 52,735 votes, winning 3 seats. The party would not win any seats in any following selections. After running for president again in 2005, he only won 23,545 votes.[2] He contested another election in 2023, running for Senate, winning only 18,052[23] votes.[24] Though his political career was barely relevant following the first direct presidential election in Poland, his name became famous worldwide, and many would try to draw lines between Tymiński and other "populists", such as American presidential candidate Donald Trump or Law and Justice chairman Jarosław Kaczyński.[25]