Leszek Miller
Encyclopedia
Zyrardów
Żyrardów is a town in central Poland with 41,400 inhabitants . It is situated in the Masovian Voivodship ; previously, it was in Skierniewice Voivodship 45 km West of Warsaw. It is the capital of Żyrardów County...
) is a Polish central-left-wing politician, leader of the Democratic Left Alliance
Democratic Left Alliance
Democratic Left Alliance is a social-democratic political party in Poland. Formed in 1991 as a coalition of centre-left parties, it was formally established as a single party on 15 April 1999. It is currently the third largest opposition party in Poland....
(1999–2004), Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
of the government of the Republic of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
in 2001-2004.
Childhood and youth
Leszek Cezary Miller comes from a poor, working-class family: His father was a tailor and his mother a needlewoman. His parents broke up when Leszek was six months old; his father, Florian, left the family and Leszek has never maintained any contact with him. His mother brought him up in a religious spirit – following her wish, he was even, for some time, an altar-boy.Due to hard life conditions, after graduation from vocational school, 17-year-old Leszek got a job in the Textile Linen Plant in Żyrardów, while continuing his education in the evenings at the Vocational Secondary School of Electric Power Engineering. He soon completed his military service on the ORP Bielik submarine.
In 1969, Miller married Aleksandra, three years his junior, in church. The Millers have a son, Leszek, and a granddaughter, Monika.
Career in the People’s Republic of Poland
Leszek Miller started his political career as an activist of the Socialist Youth Union, where he held the position of Chairman of the Plant Board, soon becoming a member of the Town Committee. After the military service, in 1969, he joined the Polish United Workers' PartyPolish United Workers' Party
The Polish United Workers' Party was the Communist party which governed the People's Republic of Poland from 1948 to 1989. Ideologically it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism.- The Party's Program and Goals :...
(PZPR).
In 1973-1974, Leszek Miller was the Secretary of the PZPR Plant Committee. With granted Party’s recommendation, he started political sciences studies at the Party’s Higher School of Political Sciences (Wyższa Szkoła Nauk Społecznych), graduating in 1977. After graduation, Leszek Miller worked at the PZPR Central Committee, supervising the Group, and later on the Department of Youth, Physical Education and Tourism.
In July 1986, Leszek Miller was elected the 1st Secretary of the PZPR Provincial Committee in Skierniewice
Skierniewice
Skierniewice is a town in central Poland with 49,132 inhabitants , situated in the Łódź Voivodship , previously capital of Skierniewice Voivodship . It is the capital of Skierniewice County. The town is situated almost exactly half-way between Łódź and Warsaw.Skierniewice gained municipal rights...
. In December 1988, he returned to Warsaw, due to his promotion to the position of the Secretary of the PZPR Central Committee.
As a representative of the government side, he took part in the session of the historic “Round Table”, where, together with Andrzej Celiński, he co-chaired the sub-team for youth issues (the only one that closed the session without signing the agreement). In 1989, he became member of the PZPR Political Bureau
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
.
The Third Republic of Poland
After the PZPR was dissolved, Leszek Miller became a co-founder of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (till March 1993, he was Secretary General, then Deputy Chairman and, from December 1997, the Chairman of that party). In December 1999, at the Founding Congress of the Democratic Left AllianceDemocratic Left Alliance
Democratic Left Alliance is a social-democratic political party in Poland. Formed in 1991 as a coalition of centre-left parties, it was formally established as a single party on 15 April 1999. It is currently the third largest opposition party in Poland....
(SLD), he was elected its Chairman, holding the function continuously till February 2004. In 1997-2001 he was the Chairman of the SLD’s caucus.
In 1989, he ran unsuccessfully for Senate as a representative of the Skierniewice Province. In subsequent elections (1991), Leszek Miller was a leader on the election list of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic in Łódź and, following a considerable success in elections, he won a seat in the Sejm
Sejm
The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....
, becoming Chairman of the Parliamentary Group of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic. In three subsequent elections to the Sejm, he ran all the time from Łódź, each time gaining more and more votes (from 50 thousand in 1991 up to 146 thousand in 2001); he held a seat in Parliament till 2005.
Through all that time he remained one of the leading politicians on the left wing. In early 90’s, together with Mieczysław Rakowski, he was suspected in the case of the, so-called, “Moscow loan”. After revealing that affair in 1991, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz called Miller to abstain from taking an MP’s oath due to accusations laid against him. When Leszek Miller got cleared of the charges, Prime Minister Cimoszewicz appointed him later as the Minister in Charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers and in 1997 the Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration in his government. In turn, Cimoszewicz became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Leszek Miller’s cabinet.
In 1993-1996, Miller was the Minister of Labour and Social Policy in the governments of Waldemar Pawlak
Waldemar Pawlak
Waldemar Pawlak is a Polish politician. He twice served as Prime Minister of Poland, briefly in 1992 and again from 1993 to 1995. Since November 2007, he has been Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy. Pawlak is the only person who held the office of Prime Minister twice during the...
and Józef Oleksy
Józef Oleksy
Józef Oleksy is a post-communist Polish politician, former chairman of Democratic Left Alliance ....
respectively. In 1996, he was nominated as Senior Minister in charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers. He then got the nickname “The Chancellor”.
Leszek Miller played an important role in concluding the case of Colonel Ryszard Kukliński
Ryszard Kuklinski
Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński was a Polish colonel, Cold War spy and whistleblower. He passed top secret Warsaw Pact documents to the CIA between 1971 and 1981...
, for which he was severely criticised within his political circle. A similar disapproval was expressed after Miller’s support for the Concordat and the candidature of Prof. Leszek Balcerowicz
Leszek Balcerowicz
Leszek Balcerowicz is a Polish economist, the former chairman of the National Bank of Poland and Deputy Prime Minister in Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government...
to the position of President of the National Bank of Poland.
During the period of the Solidarity Electoral Action’s government, Leszek Miller was in charge of the parliamentary opposition, leading the political fight with the governing party. He was also consolidating the majority of significant left-wing groups around his person. In 1999, he succeeded in establishing one uniform political party – the Democratic Left Alliance – which turned out to be very successful in following elections.
Prime minister
Following the victory of the Left (41% vs. 12% of the subsequent party) in the Parliamentary Election in 2001, on October 19, 2001, President Aleksander KwaśniewskiAleksander Kwasniewski
Aleksander Kwaśniewski is a Polish politician who served as the President of Poland from 1995 to 2005. He was born in Białogard, and during communist rule he was active in the Socialist Union of Polish Students and was the Minister for Sport in the communist government in the 1980s...
appointed Miller Prime Minister and obliged to nominate the government. The new government won the parliamentary vote of confidence on October 26, 2001 (306:140 votes with one abstention). The 16-person cabinet of Prime Minister Miller has been the smallest government of the Polish Republic
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
so far.
Leszek Miller’s government faced a difficult economic situation in Poland, including an unemployment rate above 18%, a high level of public debt, and economic stagnation. At the end of Miller’s term, economic growth exceeded 6%; still, it was too slow to reduce the unemployment rate. During his term, the unpopular program of cuts in public expenses was implemented, together with a hardly successful reform of health care financing. The reforms of the tax system and of the Social Insurance Institution were continued, and the attempt to settle the mass-media market failed. Taxes were significantly lowered – to 19 % for companies and for persons running business activity – and the act of freedom in business activity was voted through. A radical, structural reform of secret services was implemented (the State Security Office was dissolved and replaced by the Internal Security Agency and the Intelligence Agency).
Simultaneously, institutional and legal adjustments were continued, resulting from the accession to the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
. The Accession conditions were negotiated, being the main strategic goal of Miller’s cabinet. On December 13, 2002, at the summit in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
(Denmark), Prime Minister Leszek Miller completed the negotiations with the European Union. On April 16, 2003 in Athens, Miller, together with Cimoszewicz, signed the Accession Treaty, bringing Poland into the European Union. Miller’s government, in collaboration with various political and social forces, organized the accession referendum with a successful outcome. On June 7 and 8, 2003, 77.45% of the referendum participants voted in favor of Poland’s accession to the European Union. The referendum turn-out reached 58.85%.
Leszek Miller’s government, together with President Kwaśniewski, made a decision (March 2003) to join the international coalition and deploy Polish troops to Iraq, targeting at overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s government. Miller was also a co-signatory of “the letter of 8”, signed by eight European prime ministers, supporting the US position on Iraq.
On December 4, 2003, Leszek Miller suffered injuries in a helicopter crash
2003 Polish Air Force Mi-8 crash
On December 4, 2003, a Polish Mi-8 helicopter operated by the 36th Special Aviation Regiment with Poland's Prime Minister Leszek Miller on board crashed near Piaseczno, just outside of Warsaw....
near Warsaw.
At the end of its term of office, Leszek Miller’s government had the lowest public support of any government since 1989. It was mainly caused by the continuing high unemployment rate, corruption scandals, with Rywingate
Rywin affair
The Rywin affair was a corruption scandal in Poland, which began in late 2002 while the post communist government of the SLD was in power...
on top, and by the attempt of fulfilling the plan of reducing social spending (the Hausner’s plan). In result of criticism in his own party, the Democratic Left Alliance, in February 2004, Leszek Miller resigned from chairing the party. Miller was criticized for an excessively liberal approach and for stressing the role of free market mechanisms in economy. He was reproached for his acceptance of a flat tax, which ran counter to the left-wing doctrine. He was also identified with the “chieftain-like style” of leadership. On March 26, 2004, following the decision of the Speaker of the Parliament, Marek Borowski
Marek Borowski
Marek Stefan Borowski is a Polish left-wing politician. He led the Democratic Left Alliance for a time and was Speaker of the Sejm from 2001 to 2004....
, to found a new dissenting party, the Polish Social Democracy, Leszek Miller decided to resign from the position of Prime Minister on May 2, 2004, a day after Poland’s accession to the EU. On May 1, 2004, together with President Kwaśniewski, he was in Dublin, taking part in the Grand Ceremony of accession of 10 states, including Poland, to the European Union.
Later career
In 2005, despite the support of the Łódź Branch of the Democratic Left AllianceDemocratic Left Alliance
Democratic Left Alliance is a social-democratic political party in Poland. Formed in 1991 as a coalition of centre-left parties, it was formally established as a single party on 15 April 1999. It is currently the third largest opposition party in Poland....
, Leszek Miller was not registered on the election list to the Parliament. At the same time, he was offered to run for Senate but refused. Retirement of the old activists was presented in media as “inflow of new blood into the Democratic Left Alliance”. After the election, Leszek Miller became active in journalism, writing mainly for the “Wprost” weekly on liberal economic concepts and current political issues. In the first half of 2005, he stayed at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., implementing a research project: “Status of the new Poland in the Eastern Europe’s space”.