Andrzej Lepper - Political Career

Political Career

From 1977 to 1980 he was a member of PZPR Polish United Workers' Party, Poland's communist party. In 1992 Lepper formed a new political party, an organisation of struggling farmers like himself, naming it "Samoobrona" (Self defence) (SO). His first task was to displace and eliminate his rival Stanislaw Tyminski as a competitor. For this purpose, Lepper adopted much of Tyminski's political program as his own. Lepper organized anti-government demonstrations and other actions, most significantly against the Suchocka and Buzek governments, against what he saw as growing injustice, especially against farmers.

As party president he challenged Aleksander Kwaśniewski in the 1995 presidential election (1.3% votes). In the 2000, SO organized a campaign of blocking major roads in order to bring media attention to the hard-pressed situation of Polish agriculture. Lepper won 3.05% votes in the 2000 presidential election. In the 2001 parliamentary election, Lepper's party managed to enter the lower chamber of the Polish Parliament (Sejm) and formed an important fraction of it. Lepper was elected from Koszalin constituency.

Lepper's party received 11.4% of the vote and 56 seats in the September 2005 parliamentary election, making it the 3rd biggest party in the Sejm. Lepper stood in the October 2005 presidential election as his party's candidate and received 15% of the vote, the third highest result.

Lepper entered his party into a ruling coalition with the dominant PIS party in May 2006, taking on the position of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture. Subsequently, he accused his allies of spying on him and working to harm Samoobrona. Following several conflicts within the alliance, Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński asked his brother President Lech Kaczyński to sack Lepper from the Cabinet in September 2006. Kaczyński re-invited Lepper back to his cabinet several weeks later on 16 October 2006.