Development of Parties and Party Systems in ... - lah@sam.sdu.dk

party. The highest priority should be given the development of a democratic party culture anddebate 85 .Most difficult was to close down of The Republic of Poland’s Social Democratic Party (SdRP), theold SLDs strongest single political group. It has been argued that since 1989 SdRP had been SLDs“salvation”. In the first years after 1989 it had demanded much courage and willpower to join SLD.At that time SDL was exposed to several heavy attacks from right wing parties. Nonetheless, afterthe closing down of the old SLD people with a background in the old SdRP did not gain anyprivileges compared with those who joined the party after the crisis in Solidarity and demise ofAWS.The new SLD’s organizational structure and political programme was adopted at the first congressin December 1999. At the founding congress SdRP, the “core party”, was forced to take thedecision about dissolving itself. The party members and the members of parliament should decidefor themselves whether to join the new SLD on an individual basis or not. According to normalPolish standard women were well represented in the interim leadership of the party, 8 out of 27were women. Also representatives from the newly established coordinating groups on the voivodlevelwere included in the party leadership. Furthermore, some important posts were given toformer members of the Freedom Union (UW), e.g. Andrzej Celinski, a former member of UW andKOR, and later, in 2001 minister of culture, elected as chairman of the commission that preparedthe new SLDs first political programme. The election of Andrzej Celinski was a tactical move, asthe choice of Andrzej Celinski might remove what SLD called “the most irrational in Polishpolitics”, the division of the Polish population in “We” (i.e. Solidarity) versus “Them” (i.e. the“post-communists”) 86 .However, not all groups were represented in the leadership. Jerzy Urban’s organisation NIE(“Niezalezna Inicjatywa Eurpejska”) requested that, but the request was refused. The new SLDleadership hoped to obtain 100,000 party members, held up by the increase in electoral support.Already in October 1999 21,000 people had joined the new SLD on an individual basis. From thattime no legal connection existed between the old and new SLD. To the still unsolved problemsbelonged the party debt, so before closing down the old SLD the new SLD had to pay 2.5 mio. zlotyto the Polish state.At the first congress Leszek Miller was elected as the chairman of SLD by an almost unanimousvote. The choice of five vice-chairmen was met with more excitement. Here Leszek Miller had hisown way, as both one woman (Lybacka), a representative from OPZZ, and Andrzej Celinski, thedefector from UW, were elected. Also one of the vice-chairmen for the Sejm (Borowski) and JerzySzmajdzinski, a close friend of Miller, became one of the party vice-chairmen. Opposite, formerPremier Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz was not elected. The congress decided that womenshould constitute at least 30 pct. of the candidates to elections, increasing to 50 pct. in the year2007.The new party organization was divided in 160 local party units with 16 party coordinators on thevoivod-levelm thereby obtaining the best territorial coverage as possible. As noted above, collectivemembership of the party was replaced by individual membership, and also members of OPZZ hadto join the new SDL on an individual basis. The admission of new members in the new SLD took85 Polityka, no. 40 (2213), 2 October, 1999:30-31.86 Put forward e.g. by Cimoszewicz in Polityka no.40 (2213) 2 October, 1999:30-31.93