Democratic Left Alliance (Poland)

The Democratic Left Alliance (Polish: Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej) was a social-democratic^[7][8][9] political party in Poland. It was formed on 9 July 1991 as an electoral alliance of centre-left parties, and became a single party on 15 April 1999. It was the major coalition party in Poland between 1993 and 1997, and between 2001 and 2005, with four Prime ministers coming from the party: Józef Oleksy, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Leszek Miller and Marek Belka. It then faded into opposition, overshadowed by the rise of Civic Platform and Law and Justice.

Democratic Left Alliance Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej
Leader	Włodzimierz Czarzasty
Founder	Aleksander Kwaśniewski
Founded	9 July 1991 (as a coalition) 15 April 1999 (as a party)
Dissolved	27 January 2020 (2020-01-27)
Merger of	SdRP, minor parties (1991)
Merged into	New Left
Headquarters	ul. Złota 9 Warsaw
Youth wing	Social Democratic Youth Federation
Membership (2018)	33,554^[1]
Ideology	Social democracy Pro-Europeanism^[2] Atlanticism^[3]^[4]^[5]
Political position	Centre-left^[6]
National affiliation	The Left^[A]
European affiliation	Party of European Socialists
International affiliation	Progressive Alliance
European Parliament group	Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
Colours	Red
Website
lewica.org.pl
Politics of Poland Political parties Elections ^ A: Previously SLD-UP (2001–14), Left and Democrats (2006–08), United Left (2015) and the European Coalition (2019).

In February 2020, the party initiated a process to absorb the Spring party, choosing the name New Left (Polish: Nowa Lewica), and changing to a more modern logo.

The party was a member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance.

History

Ideology and support patterns

The party can be classified as centre-left. However, during the 1990s, it managed to attract voters from the pro-market and even right-wing camp.^[10] The main support for SLD came from middle-rank state sector employees, retired people, former communist Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) and All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ)^{[clarification needed]} members and those who were unlikely to be frequent church-goers.^[11] The core of the coalition (Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland) rejected concepts such as lustration and de-communization, supported a parliamentarian regime with only the role of an arbiter for the president and criticized the right-wing camp for the introduction of religious education into school.^[12] The ex-communists criticized the economic reforms, pointing to the high social costs, without negating the reforms per se.

Coalition

SdRP, SDU and some other socialist and social-democratic parties had formed the original Democratic Left Alliance as a centre-left coalition just prior to the nation's first free elections in 1991. In 1999 the coalition became a party but lost some members.

At the time, the coalition's membership drew mostly from the former PZPR. An alliance between the SLD and the Polish People's Party (PSL) ruled Poland in the years 1993–1997. However, the coalition lost power to the right-wing Solidarity Electoral Action in the 1997 election as the right-wing opposition was united this time and because of the decline of support for SLD's coalition partner PSL, though the SLD itself actually gained votes.

Electoral victory

SLD formed a coalition with Labour Union before the 2001 Polish election and won it overwhelmingly at last by capturing about 5.3 million votes, 42% of the whole and won 200 of 460 seats in the Sejm and 75 of 100 in the Senate. After the elections, the coalition was joined by the Polish People's Party (PSL) in forming a government and Leszek Miller became the Prime Minister. In March 2003, the PSL left the coalition.

Rywin affair

By 2004 the support for SLD in the polls had dropped from about 30% to just below 10%, and several high-ranking party members had been accused of taking part in high-profile political scandals by the mainstream press, including the Rywin affair, in which film producer Lew Rywin, claiming to be acting on behalf of the government, sought a bribe from the editor of the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper in return for favourable amendments to a proposed new law on media ownership. Prime Minister Leszek Miller was obliged under Polish law to report the attempted bribery to the police when it was brought to his attention, but did not do so.^[13]

On 6 March 2004, Miller resigned as party leader and was replaced by Krzysztof Janik. On March 26 the Sejm speaker Marek Borowski, together with other high-ranking SLD officials, announced the creation of a new centre-left party, the Social Democratic Party of Poland. On the next day, Leszek Miller announced he would step down as Prime Minister on 2 May 2004, the day after Poland joined the European Union. Miller proceeded to do so.

Decline after Rywin-gate

In the 2004 European Parliament election, it only received 9% of the votes, giving it 5 of 54 seats reserved for Poland in the European Parliament, as part of the Party of European Socialists.

Wojciech Olejniczak, the former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, was elected the president of SLD on 29 May 2004, succeeded Józef Oleksy, who resigned from the post of Polish Prime Minister due to false accusations of links to the KGB.

Opposition: 2005 and after

The 2004 European elections foreshadowed the SLD's huge defeat in the 2005 parliamentary election, in which it won only 11.3% of the vote. This gave the party 55 seats, barely a quarter of what it had had prior to the election. It also lost all of its senators. In late 2006 a centre-left political alliance called Left and Democrats was created, comprising SLD and smaller centre-left parties, the Labour Union, the Social Democratic Party of Poland, and the liberal Democratic Party – demokraci.pl. The coalition won a disappointing 13% in the 2007 parliamentary election and was dissolved soon after in April 2008. On 31 May 2008, Olejniczak was replaced by Grzegorz Napieralski as an SLD leader.

In the 2009 European election the Democratic Left Alliance-Labor Union joint ticket received 12% of the vote and 7 MEPs were elected as part of the newly retitled Socialists & Democrats group.

In the 2011 parliamentary election, SLD received 8.24% of the vote which gave it 27 seats in the Sejm.^[14] After the elections, one of the party members, Sławomir Kopyciński, decided to leave SLD and join Palikot's Movement.^[15] On December 10, 2011, Leszek Miller was chosen to return as the party leader.

In the 2014 European elections on 25 May 2014, the SLD received 9.4% of the national vote and returned 4 MEPs.

In July 2015 the SLD formed the United Left electoral alliance along with Your Movement (TR), Labour United (UP) and The Greens (PZ) and minor parties to contest the upcoming election.^[16][17]

In the 2015 parliamentary election held on 25 October 2015, the United Left list received 7.6% of the vote,^[18] below the 8% threshold (electoral alliances must win at least 8% of the vote, as opposed to the 5% for individual parties),^[19] leaving the SLD without parliamentary representation for the first time. Indeed, for the first time since the end of Communism, no centre-left parties won any seats in this election.^[20]

In 2017, the party withdrew from the Socialist International, while maintaining ties with the Progressive Alliance.^{[citation needed]}

For the 2019 parliamentary election SLD formed an alliance with Razem and Wiosna, known as The Left.^[21] In the 2019 parliamentary election, the alliance won 12.6% of the vote and 49 seats in the Sejm, with the SLD winning 24. Later, it was announced that the Democratic Left Alliance would form with the Spring new political party called the New Left. The creation was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[22]

Voter base

The SLD is usually seen as the face of the standard Polish left, having achieved notable electoral success during the 90s and benefitting from a strongly organized network of local offices, which span 320 of Poland's 380 administrative counties. For this reason, it was often viewed as the go-to party for left-leaning Poles for the majority of Poland's modern history.^[23][24] The party's monopoly on mainstream left-wing economic ideas in Poland however ended, after the right-wing PiS party adopted many economically interventionist positions, which led a considerable portion of economically left-wing Poles to vote for PiS instead.^[25][26]

Besides self-described left-wingers, the party enjoys the support of many members of the country's police and military, but its largest voting bloc resides among former PZPR members, government officials and civil servants during the PPR period, which are seen as the party's core supporters. The loyal support of this voting bloc enabled the SLD to remain the largest party of the Polish left, even throughout the scandals that rocked the party in the early 2000s.^[24][27][28]

However, this electoral bloc was seen as unreliable by political observers^{[citation needed]}, as despite the fact that it originally constituted a huge voting bloc, that segment of the population would inevitably shrink as its members steadily age^{[citation needed]}. Following the passage of a "degradation law" by the ruling right-wing PiS party, which cut pensions and disability benefits to thousands of former bureaucrats, however, the party has undergone a revival, as more and more people's primary income came to be threatened by the new government policy. This led many of those affected to support the SLD, thus enlarging and mobilizing the formerly shrinking voting bloc.^[24][27][29]

The SLD nonetheless made a significant effort to broaden its political appeal by joining forces with two smaller left-wing parties in 2019, creating The Left political alliance, which poses itself as a 'modern' take on leftism.^[30][31]

Election results

Sejm

Election year	Leader	# of votes	% of vote	# of overall seats won	+/–	Govt?
1991	Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz	1,344,820	12.0 (#2)	60 / 460	113	Opposition
1993	Aleksander Kwaśniewski	2,815,169	20.4 (#1)	171 / 460	111	Coalition
1997	Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz	3,551,224	27.1 (#2)	164 / 460	6	Opposition
2001	Leszek Miller	5,342,519	41.0 (#1)	200 / 460	32	SLD-UP-PSL (2001-2003)
						SLD-UP (2003-2004)
						SLD-UP-SDPL (2004-2005)
	As part of the SLD-UP coalition, which won 216 seats in total.
2005	Wojciech Olejniczak	1,335,257	11.3 (#4)	55 / 460	145	PiS Minority (2005)
						PiS–SRP–LPR (2006-2007)
2007		2,122,981	13.2 (#3)	40 / 460	15	Opposition
	As part of the Left and Democrats coalition, which won 53 seats in total.
2011	Grzegorz Napieralski	1,184,303	8.2 (#5)	27 / 460	13	Opposition
2015	Leszek Miller	1,147,102	7.6 (#5)	0 / 460	27	Extra-parliamentary
	As part of the United Left coalition, which did not win any seats.
2019	Włodzimierz Czarzasty	2,319,946	12.6 (#3)	49 / 460	49	Opposition

Senate

Election year	# of votes	% of vote	# of overall seats won	+/–
1991	2,431,178	21.2	4 / 100	4
1993	4,993,061	35.7	37 / 100	33
1997	6,091,721	45.7	28 / 100	9
2001	10,476,677	38.7	70 / 100	42
	As part of the SLD-UP coalition, which won 75 seats in total.
2005	3,114,118	12.9	0 / 100	70
2007	4,751,281	14.6	1 / 100
	As part of the Left and Democrats coalition, which won 1 seat.
2011	1,307,547	9.0	1 / 100
2015	595,206	4.0	0 / 100
	As part of the United Left coalition, which did not win any seats.
2019	415,745	2.3	2 / 100

Presidential

Election year	Candidate	1st round		2nd round
		# of overall votes	% of overall vote	# of overall votes	% of overall vote
1990	Supported Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz	1,514,025	9.2 (#4)
1995	Aleksander Kwaśniewski	6,275,670	35.1 (#1)	9,704,439	51.7 (#1)
2000	Supported Aleksander Kwaśniewski	9,485,224	53.9 (#1)
2005	Supported Marek Borowski	1,544,642	10.3% (#4)
2010	Grzegorz Napieralski	2,299,870	13.7 (#3)
2015	Supported Magdalena Ogórek	353,883	2.4 (#5)
2020	Supported Robert Biedroń	432,129	2.2 (#6)

European Parliament

Election year	# of votes	% of vote	# of overall seats won	+/–
2004	569,311	9.4 (#5)	5 / 54	5
2009	908,765	12.3 (#3)	7 / 50	2
2014	667,319	9.4 (#3)	5 / 51	2
2019	5 249 935	38,47 (#2)	5 / 51
As part of the European Coalition, which won 22 seats in total.

Regional assemblies

Election year	% of vote	# of overall seats won	+/–
1998	31.8 (#2)	329 / 855
2002	24.7 (#1)	189 / 561
2006	14.3 (#3)	66 / 561	123
As part of the Left and Democrats coalition.
2010	15.2 (#4)	85 / 561	19
2014	8.8 (#4)	28 / 555	57
As part of the SLD - The Left Together coalition.
2018	6.7 (#4)	11 / 552	17
As part of the SLD - The Left Together coalition.

Presidents and Prime Ministers

Presidents of the Republic of Poland from SLD

Name	Imamge	From	To
Aleksander Kwaśniewski		23 December 1995	23 December 2005

Prime Ministers of the Republic of Poland from SLD

Name	Imamge	From	To
Józef Oleksy		7 March 1995	7 February 1996
Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz		7 February 1996	31 October 1997
Leszek Miller		19 October 2001	2 May 2004
Marek Belka		2 May 2004	31 October 2005

See also

• List of Democratic Left Alliance politicians
• coalition Democratic Left Alliance-Labor Union

References

1. . Archived from the original on 14 June 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
2. "SLD dołącza do Koalicji Europejskiej na eurowybory. Kandydatami m.in. Miller, Belka i Cimoszewicz". gazetapl (in Polish). Retrieved 2019-05-08.
3. "SLD - historia" (in Polish). 5 July 2017. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
4. "Miller broni wojny z terroryzmem" (in Polish). Retrieved 15 September 2019.
5. "Jak rozpętaliśmy..." (in Polish). Retrieved 15 September 2019.
6. Henningsen, Bernd; Etzold, Tobias; Hanne, Krister, eds. (15 September 2017). The Baltic Sea Region: A Comprehensive Guide: History, Politics, Culture and Economy of a European Role Model. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag. p. 352. ISBN 978-3-8305-1727-6.
7. José Magone (26 August 2010). Contemporary European Politics: A Comparative Introduction. Routledge. p. 457. ISBN 978-0-203-84639-1. Retrieved 19 July 2013.
8. Susanne Jungerstam-Mulders (2006). Post-Communist Eu Member States: Parties and Party Systems. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-7546-4712-6. Retrieved 6 February 2013.
9. Dimitri Almeida (27 April 2012). The Impact of European Integration on Political Parties: Beyond the Permissive Consensus. CRC Press. p. 71. ISBN 978-1-136-34039-0. Retrieved 14 July 2013.
10. The Communist Successor Parties of Central and Eastern Europe by András Bozóki, John T. Ishiyama. M.E. Sharpe, 2002. pp 70-71
11. The Communist Successor Parties of Central and Eastern Europe by András Bozóki, John T. Ishiyama. M.E. Sharpe, 2002. p. 82
12. Communist and Post-communist Parties in Europe edited by Uwe Backes, Patrick Moreau. p. 321.
13. "Bribery case threatens Polish government". the Guardian. 2003-06-09. Retrieved 2023-01-18.
14. "Elections 2011 – Election results". National Electoral Commission. from the original on 2011-12-14. Retrieved 2011-11-20.
15. "Poseł Kopyciński z SLD przeszedł do Ruchu Palikota" (in Polish). .dziennik.pl. 2011-10-20. from the original on 2011-11-22. Retrieved 2011-11-20.
16. "Polish left to unite for general election". thenews.pl. from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
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18. Hubert Tworzecki; Radosław Markowski (2015-11-03). "Did Poland just vote in an authoritarian government?". The Washington Post. from the original on 2016-12-05.
19. Nardelli, Alberto (2015-10-22). "Polish elections 2015: a guide to the parties, polls and electoral system". The Guardian. from the original on 2017-01-09.
20. Gaeta, Vanessa (2015-10-28). "Left wing is shut out in parliamentary vote in conservative Poland". The Boston Globe. Associated Press. from the original on 2017-03-04.
21. "Lewica łączy siły: SLD, Razem i Wiosna w wspólnym bloku". Media Narodowe (in Polish). 2019-07-18. Retrieved 2019-08-22.
22. "Zjednoczenie Lewicy nastąpi dopiero pod koniec roku". www.gazetaprawna.pl (in Polish). 2020-06-09. Retrieved 2023-01-18.
23. "[Opinion] Polish Left need to unite for October election". EUobserver. 4 July 2019. Retrieved 2019-10-18.
24. Szczerbiak, Aleks (2018-04-30). "What are the prospects for the Polish left?". London School of Economics series on Evidence-based analysis and commentary on European politics. Retrieved 2019-10-18.
25. "Polish voters give their verdict on four years of right-wing populists". The Independent. 2019-10-12. Retrieved 2019-10-18.
26. "Socialists set to make comeback in Polish elections next month". The Independent. 2019-09-21. Retrieved 2019-10-18.
27. "Lewica: a united Polish left". www.ips-journal.eu. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
28. "2019 election for Poland's parliament: What you need to know". The Krakow Post. 2019-10-12. Retrieved 2019-10-18.
29. SADURA, Przemysław; SIERAKOWSKI, Sławomir (2019). POLITICAL CYNICISM: The Case of Poland (PDF).
30. "Poland's fragmented opposition coalesces into left, center blocs". Reuters. 2019-07-18. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
31. "Polish leftists join forces ahead of elections". PolskieRadio.pl. Retrieved 2019-10-18.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej.

• Official website  
• The Warsaw Voice Article. 24 November 2004.