The Polish People's Party (Polish: Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, abbreviated to PSL (traditionally translated as Polish Peasants' Party), is a centrist, agrarian, and Christian democratic political party in Poland. It currently has 31 members of the Sejm, one member of the Senate, and three Members of the European Parliament. It is the junior partner in a coalition with Civic Platform.
The party was formed in 1990. Originally a left-wing party, the PSL formed a coalition with the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) after winning 132 seats in the Sejm at the 1993 election, with PSL leader Waldemar Pawlak as Prime Minister until 1995. The party fell to 27 at the next election, and moved towards the centre at the end of the 1990s. In 2001, the party re-entered a coalition with the SLD, but withdrew in 2003. After the 2007 election, the PSL entered a coalition with the centre-right Civic Platform.
The party's name traces its tradition to an agrarian party in Austro-Hungarian-controlled Galician Poland, which sent MPs to the parliament in Vienna.
Read more about Polish People's Party: Ideology, Leadership
Famous quotes containing the words polish, people and/or party:
“The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is ... remarkable ... that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.”
—Frances Trollope (17801863)
“[F]rankly ... it was perfectly true that I had, for over a year, expressed the opinion that Indo-China should not go back to France but that it should be administered by an international trusteeship. France has had the country ... for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning.... France has milked it for one hundred years. The people of Indo-China are entitled to something better than that.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (18821945)
“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet, and of the Devils party without knowing it.”
—William Blake (17571827)