Poland
Polish Sejm election ordination in practice does not allow lone candidates to run. Tickets always have multiple candidates as every district is represented by multiple Sejm Members. Hence, almost all tickets are partisan. However, during a Sejm term many Sejm Members switch parties or become independents.
Tickets like Civic Platform during the 2001 election were formally non-partisan, Civic Platform was widely viewed as a de facto political party, as it is now.
The situation in the Senate is different, as the voting system allows independents to run as single candidates and some are elected in their own right. However, only Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz is independent.
Three Presidents since 1990 have technically been independents. Lech Wałęsa was not an endorsed candidate of any party, but the chairman of the Solidarity and he was elected without full support of this union (Solidarity votes split between him and Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki). Aleksander Kwaśniewski was a leader of the Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland, but formally resigned from the party after he was elected, as did Lech Kaczyński, who was the first leader of Law and Justice, but also resigned from the party on getting elected.
Read more about this topic: No Party Affiliation
Famous quotes containing the word poland:
“It is often said that Poland is a country where there is anti-semitism and no Jews, which is pathology in its purest state.”
—Bronislaw Geremek (b. 1932)