Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej

Alliance of the Democratic Left
Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej
abbreviation	SLD
Party leader	Włodzimierz Czarzasty
founding	1991 (as a parliamentary group) 1999 (as a party)
Headquarters	Warsaw
Alignment	Social democracy
Number of members	33,554 (May 2018)
European party	SPE
EP Group	S&D
Youth organization	Federacja Młodych Socjaldemokratów
Colours)	red
Sejm	24/460
senate	0/100
Eu Parliament	5/52
Sejmiks	11/552
Website	www.sld.org.pl

The Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej (German Federation of Democratic Left , SLD for short ) is a social democratic party in Poland . The former ruling Communist Party of the People's Republic of Poland , the Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (PZPR), is one of its predecessors . In the parliamentary elections in 1993 and 2001, the SLD emerged as the strongest parliamentary group. A total of four prime ministers came from the ranks of the SLD, and another non-party leader also led an SLD government. Between 1995 and 2005, the SLD appointed Aleksander Kwaśniewski as President of the Republic . After the party was unable to win a seat in the Sejm in the 2015 parliamentary elections , it returned to the Sejm in 2019 as part of an electoral alliance with 24 seats.

history

The SLD was formed in 1991 as an electoral alliance of around thirty groups, including the Socjaldemokracja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej (SdRP) as the immediate successor to the communist Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza and the Ogólnopolskie Porozumien OPZawZodowych (OPZków ZawZodowych).

In the parliamentary elections in 1991 , the SLD was the second largest parliamentary group after the Unia Demokratyczna (UD) of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki with 12.3 percent of the vote, with 12.0 percent of the vote. Despite the relative success, he was excluded from all coalition options, as he was considered a post-communist party not capable of forming a coalition. In the early parliamentary elections in 1993 , the SLD finally became the strongest force with 20.4 percent of the vote and formed a government coalition with the agrarian Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL). The chairman of the PSL, Waldemar Pawlak , became prime minister . Although both groups only got 35.8 percent of the vote, they made up almost two thirds of the MPs with 303 of 460 seats and were thus able to govern with a comfortable majority. The large discrepancy between the proportion of votes and the proportion of mandates resulted from the high number of unrepresented votes, as numerous parties, especially parties in the post- Solidarność camp, had failed because of the threshold clause. The coalition between the SLD and the PSL may be close to the People's Republic of Poland due to their shared past as bloc parties , but it was probably more the will to participate in the government than the common ground that kept the coalition together until the end of the legislative period .

After Pawlak was voted out in a vote of no confidence , Józef Oleksy was appointed head of government by the SLD on March 15, 1995 . Oleksy resigned on January 26, 1996 after accusations by a minister of his own government - Interior Minister Andrzej Milczanowski - of alleged espionage activities for Russia . His successor was Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz , who led the government until October 17, 1997.

Leszek Miller (Prime Minister 2001 to 2004, Party Chairman 1999 to 2004 and 2011 to 2015)

In the 1997 parliamentary elections , the SLD was able to achieve another percentage success with 27.1 percent of the vote, but still had to give up seven seats, which meant that it received 164 instead of 171 seats. With the merger of the Post Solidarność camp to form Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność (AWS), the parties that had failed in 1993 now managed to jointly achieve a majority of the votes with 33.8 percent.

During the legislative period, the electoral alliance decided to transform itself into a party. The SdRP was dissolved (not least to avoid being held responsible as the legal successor of the PZPR) and a congress was held in Warsaw on December 18 and 19, 1999, at which the electoral alliance was converted into a regular party. Leszek Miller became the first chairman of the SLD . After the SLD, thanks to an alliance with the left-wing Unia Pracy (UP), had a landslide victory in the 2001 parliamentary elections with 41 percent of the votes, Miller was elected Prime Minister of a coalition government with the UP and the PSL. After his resignation, shortly after Poland joined the European Union on May 1, 2004, the non-party economist Marek Belka became his successor.

Also in 2004, during a deep political crisis, part of the party split off under the leadership of the then Sejm Marshal Marek Borowski and founded Socjaldemokracja Polska (SdPL). Other politicians left the SLD to join the newly formed social-liberal party Partia Demokratyczna (PD), which had emerged from the liberal Unia Wolności (UW).

In December 2004, the delegates elected the latter as their chairman in a battle vote between Krzysztof Janik and Józef Oleksy, who had been Prime Minister from 1995 to 1996. But in May 2005 the entire presidium and board of the party resigned, which in June led to a comprehensive generation change. The former Minister of Agriculture Wojciech Olejniczak then strove to reintegrate the SLD into the party passion as the new chairman. To this end, he ensured that no former PZPR party cadres could be found on the SLD's electoral lists. Olejniczak himself was the first party leader who had not previously been a member of the PZPR. In addition to internal party quarrels, the legislative period was also marked by numerous corruption scandals, so that the party was severely punished in the 2005 parliamentary elections and only got 11.3 percent of the vote.

For the 2007 parliamentary elections , the SLD finally entered into an electoral alliance with the UP, the SdPL and the PD. The parties ran together for election under the name Lewica i Demokraci (LiD). The lead candidate for this electoral alliance was former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski from the SLD. In the end, however, the parties only received 13.15 percent of the vote and thus 4.5 percent less than the combined election results of the individual parties in 2005. The electoral alliance was dissolved in 2008. In a vote against Olejniczak, the previous Secretary General Grzegorz Napieralski was elected as the new chairman of the SLD.

In the 2011 parliamentary elections , the SLD achieved the worst result in its history. The party received only 1,184,303 votes and entered the Sejm as the weakest party represented with only 8.24 percent . Napieralski then announced his resignation on October 10th. Leszek Miller was then elected chairman of the parliamentary group and on December 10, 2011 again chairman of the SLD. Miller subsequently proposed the politically inexperienced historian and television presenter Magdalena Ogórek as a candidate for the 2015 presidential election . On May 10, 2015, Ogórek only came fifth in the first ballot with 2.38 percent of the vote.

Włodzimierz Czarzasty (party leader since 2016)

In the 2015 parliamentary elections , the SLD joined other left-wing parties such as Twój Ruch (TR) and the Polish Greens of the Partia Zieloni (PZ) as the electoral alliance Zjednoczona Lewica (ZL) due to poor poll results . With a result of only 7.55 percent of the vote, the electoral alliance even undercut the SLD's 2011 result. Due to the eight percent hurdle for electoral alliances in Poland, the SLD did not achieve a single mandate in the Sejm for the first time since 1991.

Leszek Miller, who was under internal criticism for the nomination of the unsuccessful presidential candidate Ogórek and his reluctance to form the electoral alliance, had announced before the parliamentary elections that he would no longer run for the party chairmanship in the regular election. His successor was SLD veteran Włodzimierz Czarzasty after a runoff election in January 2016 . A new program was decided in early 2017.

In the 2019 parliamentary elections , the left-wing liberal Wiosna and the democratic-socialist Lewica Razem competed under the common name Lewica on the SLD list.

Party leader (since 1999)

• Leszek Miller , April 15, 1999 - March 6, 2004
• Krzysztof Janik , March 6, 2004 - December 18, 2004
• Józef Oleksy , December 18, 2004 - May 29, 2005
• Wojciech Olejniczak , May 29, 2005 - May 31, 2008
• Grzegorz Napieralski , May 31, 2008 - December 10, 2011
• Leszek Miller , December 10, 2011 - January 23, 2016
• Włodzimierz Czarzasty , since January 23, 2016

Election results in parliamentary elections

• 1991 : 12.0%
• 1993 : 20.4%
• 1997 : 27.1%
• 2001 : 41.0% (in the electoral alliance with Unia Pracy )
• 2005 : 11.3%
• 2007 : 13.2% (in the electoral alliance with Unia Pracy and Socjaldemokracja Polska as Lewica i Demokraci )
• 2011 : 8.2%
• 2015 : 7.5% (in the electoral alliance with the Twój Ruch , the Zieloni and the Polska Partia Socjalistyczna as Zjednoczona Lewica )
• 2019 : 12.6% (in the electoral alliance with Wiosna and Razem )

Election results in presidential elections

• 1990 : 9.21% (predecessor party Socjaldemokracja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej )
• 1995 : 35.1% (in the first ballot), 51.7% (in the runoff)
• 2000 : 53.9% (in the electoral alliance with Unia Pracy )
• 2005 : 10.3% (in the electoral alliance with the Zieloni , Unia Pracy and Socjaldemokracja Polska )
• 2010 : 13.7%
• 2015 : 2.4%
• 2020 : 2.2% (in an electoral alliance with Wiosna , Razem and the Polska Partia Socjalistyczna )

Web links

Commons : Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• SLD website (Polish, English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://i.imgur.com/ijnRlk4.png
2. ↑ ^{a b} On the way to the new Budapest , Neues Deutschland from October 26, 2015
3. ↑ "Niosę worek z kamieniami". Miller nowym szefem klubu SLD ('I am carrying a sack of stones'. Miller is the new leader of the SLD). tvn24.pl, October 19, 2011
4. ↑ Leszek Miller nowym szefem SLD  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Leszek Miller new head of the SLD). Gazeta.pl, December 10, 2011  
5. ↑ Jakub Majmurek: Opowieści for krypty, czyli nowy program SLD. In: KrytykaPolityczna.pl. February 6, 2017, accessed October 2, 2019 (pl-PL). 
6. ↑ Powyborcze plany Lewicy: Wiosna i SLD CHCA być razem. Well razie bez razem. Retrieved October 2, 2019 (Polish).