Post by pieter on Aug 28, 2006 7:52:11 GMT -7
Dear Fellow Forum members,
This article interests me, because it gives a realistic and practical
insight of the Polish system. However it is written in English and
I can't check if it is comparable with the Polish information?
I am always aware that when I read articles, essays, texts or
letters in Dutch, English, German or even French that they are
written in a foreign perspective, from abroad.
I often witness differances in between the English or Dutch
version of Wikipedia and the Polish version.
The Polish version is often more comprehensive.
That can have to do with the fact that a majority of the English
or Dutch readers have no ties or links to Poland whatsoever,
and that therfor the information is limited and sometimes
not even there. Some subjects I could find in the Polish
version I could not find in the Dutch, German or English versions.
Pieter
Politics of Poland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Politics of Poland takes place in the framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Prime Minister of Poland is the head of government and of a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the Sejm and the Senate. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
Executive power is exercised by the government, which consists of a council of ministers led by the Prime Minister. Its members are typically chosen from a majority coalition in the lower house of parliament (the Sejm), although exceptions to this rule are not uncommon. The government is formally announced by the president, and must pass a motion of confidence in the Sejm within two weeks.
Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, Sejm and Senate. Members of parliament are elected by proportional representation, with the proviso that non-ethnic-minority parties must gain at least 5% of the national vote to enter the lower house. Currently six parties are represented. Parliamentary elections occur at least every four years.
The president, as the head of state, has the power to veto legislation passed by parliament, but otherwise has a mostly representative role. Presidential elections occur every 5 years.
The political system is defined in the Polish Constitution, which also guarantees a wide range of individual freedoms.
The judicial branch plays a minor role in politics, apart from the Constitutional Tribunal, which can annul laws that violate the freedoms guaranteed in the constitution.
Recent Developments
In the autumn of 2005 Poles voted in both parliamentary and presidential elections. September's parliamentary poll was expected to produce a coalition of two centre-right parties, PiS (Law and Justice) and PO (Citizens Platform). During the increasingly bitter campaign, however, PiS launched a strong attack on the liberal economic policies of their allies and overtook PO in opinion polls. PiS eventually gained 27% of votes cast and became the largest party in the sejm ahead of PO on 24%. The out-going ruling party, the socialist SLD, achieved just 11%.
Presidential elections in October followed a similar script. The early favourite, Donald Tusk, leader of the PO, saw his opinion poll lead slip away and was beaten 54% to 46% in the second round by the PiS candidate Lech Kaczynski (one of the twins, founders of the party).
Both elections were blighted by low turn-outs: only 51% in the second and deciding round of the presidential election and just over 40% in the parliamentary election. The suggested cause of the low turnout is popular disillusionment with politicians.
Coalition talks ensued simultaneously with the presidential elections. However, the severity of the campaign attacks and the willingness of PiS to court the populist vote had soured the relationship between the two largest parties and made the creation of a stable coalition impossible. The ostensible stumbling blocks were the insistence of PiS that it control all aspects of law enforcement: the Ministries of Justice and Internal Affairs, and the special forces; as well as the forcing through of a PiS candidate for the head of the Sejm with help of several smaller populist parties. The PO decided to go into opposition.
PiS then formed a minority government with the previously little-known Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz as Prime Minister instead of party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski who remained influential in the background. This government relied on the tacit and rather stable support of smaller populist and agrarian parties (PSL, Samoobrona, LPR) to govern.
The new government enjoyed quite strong public support (as is, in fact, generally common in the first few months after an election), while the popularity of the populist parties giving it support has significantly waned. With this background, a parliamentary crisis appeared to loom in January 2006, with these small populist parties fearing that PiS was about to force new elections (on which they would lose out) by using the pretext of failing to pass the budget within the constitutional timeframe. However, this crisis appears to have abated.
In July 2006, following a rift with his party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Marcinkiewicz tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and was replaced by Kaczynski who formed a new government.
Executive branch
Main office holders
President Lech Kaczynski (party) PiS 23 December 2005
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski (party) PiS 14 July 2006
The president is elected by popular vote for a five-year term, the prime minister and deputy prime ministers are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Sejm. The Council of Ministers is responsible to the prime minister and the Sejm; the prime minister proposes, the president appoints, and the Sejm approves the Council of Ministers.
Legislative branch
The Polish Parliament has two chambers. The lower chamber (Sejm) has 460 members, elected for a four year term by proportional representation in multi-seat constituencies using the d'Hondt method similar to that used in many parliamentary political systems, with a 5 % threshold (8% for coalitions, threshold waived for national minorities). The Senate (Senat) has 100 members elected for a four year term in 40 multi-seat constituencies under a rare plurality bloc voting method where several candidates with the highest support are elected from each electorate. When sitting in joint session, members of the Sejm and Senate form the National Assembly, (Polish Zgromadzenie Narodowe). The National Assembly is formed on three occasions: Taking the oath of office by a new president, bringing an indictment against the President of the Republic to the Tribunal of State, and declaration of a President's permanent incapacity to exercise their duties due to the state of their health. Only the first kind has occurred to date. Since 1991 elections are supervised by the National Electoral Commission (Panstwowa Komisja Wyborcza), whose administrative division is called the National Electoral Office (Krajowe Biuro Wyborcze).
Judicial branch
The judicial branch plays a minor role in decision-making. Its major institutions include the Supreme Court (Sad Najwyzszy), the Supreme Administrative Court (Naczelny Sad Administracyjny) (judges appointed by the president of the republic on the recommendation of the National Council of the Judiciary for an indefinite period), the Constitutional Tribunal (Trybunal Konstytucyjny) (judges chosen by the Sejm for nine-year terms) and the Tribunal of State (Trybunal Stanu) (judges chosen by the Sejm for the current term of office of the Sejm, except for the position of chairperson which is held by the First President of the Supreme Court). The Sejm (on approval of the Polish Senate) appoints the Ombudsman (Rzecznik Praw Obywatelskich, translates as Civil Rights Spokesman) for a five-year term. The Ombudsman's duty is guarding the observance and implementation of human and citizens' rights and liberties, as well as of the law, principles of community life and social justice.
Poland has a mixture of Continental (Napoleonic) civil law and holdover communist legal theory, although the latter is being gradually removed as part of a broader and ongoing reform process. The Constitutional Tribunal supervises the compliance of statutory law with the Constitution, and annuls laws which do not comply. Its rulings are final (since October 1999); court decisions can be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Developments since 2000
In the presidential election of 2000, Aleksander Kwasniewski, the incumbent former leader of the post-communist SLD, was re-elected in the first round of voting, with 53.9% of the popular vote. Second place, with only 17.3%, went to Andrzej Olechowski. It is thought that the opposition campaign was hindered by their inability to put forward a charismatic (or even a single major) candidate, as well as falling support for the centre-right AWS government. This was related to internal friction in the ruling parliamentary coalition.
The (then) fresh Constitution and the reformed administrative division (as of 1999) required a revision of the electoral system, which was passed in April 2001. The most important changes were: 1) the final liquidation of the party list (previously, some of the members of parliament were elected from a party list, based on nationwide voter support, rather than from local constituencies), and 2) modification of the method of allocating seats to the Sainte-Laguë method, which gave less premium to large parties. Incidentally, this change was soon reverted back to the d'Hondt method in 2002.
The September 2001 parliamentary elections in 2001 saw the SLD (successor to the communist party twice removed) triumph on the back of voter dissolusionment with the AWS government and internal bickering within that bloc. So much so that this former ruling party did not enter parliament due to falling below the 8% threshold for coalitions. (Symptomatically, they had failed to form a formal political party, which has only a 5% threshold, and formally remained a "coalition" of parties).
The SLD went on to form a coalition with the agrarian PSL and leftist UP, with Leszek Miller as Prime Minister.
A leading issue in the subsequent years was negotiations with the European Union regarding accession and internal preparation for this. Poland joined the EU in May 2004. Both President Kwasniewski and the government were vocal in their support for this cause. The only party decidedly opposed to EU entry was the populist right-wing League of Polish Families (LPR).
Despite broad popular support for joining the EU, which was considered an overriding issue, the government rapidly lost popularity due to incompetence on various issues (e.g. building of motorways, and a botched reform of the health system), a general economic slump, and numerous corruption scandals. The most famous of these were the Rywin affair (an alleged attempt to interfere with the legislative process, so named after the main suspect Lew Rywin) -- this case was investigated by a special parliamentary committee, whose proceedings were televised and widely followed), and the Starachowice affair (government ministers informed friends with links to organised crime about an impending raid).
In March some prominent SLD politicians and MPs (including the then Speaker of the Sejm: Marek Borowski) formed a split, creating the new SDPL party. The cabinet led by Leszek Miller resigned on May 2, 2004, just after Poland's admission to the European Union.
A new cabinet was formed, with Marek Belka as prime minister. After two initial unsuccessful attempts, it eventually won parliamentary support (24 June) and governed until the parliamentary elections in late 2005. Several of the new ministers were seen as non-partisan experts, and the government was considered a marked improvement upon the previous cabinet. This did not carry over into any rise in voter support for the SLD, however, even despite an economic upturn through 2005. Part of the reason being that this government was considered to be largely apart from the party backbone, and only held in office by the fear of early elections by the majority of the MPs.
A fear not unfounded, as the SLD saw its support drop by three-fourths to only 11% in the subsequent elections.
National Security
Poland's top national security goal is to further integrate with NATO and other west European defense, economic, and political institutions via a modernization and reorganization of its military. Polish military doctrine reflects the same defense nature as its NATO partners.
Poland maintains a sizable armed force recently counted at 175,343 troops divided among an army of 96,733, an air and defense force of 39,649, and a navy of 15,980. The Ministry of Defense has announced that the armed forces of Poland will number 150,000 by 2006. Poland relies on military conscription for the majority of its personnel strength. All males (with some exceptions) are subject to a 9-month term of military service.
The Polish military continues to restructure and to modernize its equipment. The Polish Defense Ministry General Staff and the Land Forces staff have recently reorganized the latter into a NATO-compatible J/G-1 through J/G-6 structure. Budget constraints hamper such priority defense acquisitions as a multi-role fighter, improved communications systems, and an attack helicopter.
Poland continues to be a regional leader in support and participation in the NATO Partnership for Peace Program and has actively engaged most of its neighbors and other regional actors to build stable foundations for future European security arrangements. Poland continues its long record of strong support for UN Peacekeeping Operations by maintaining a unit in Southern Lebanon, a battalion in NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR), and by providing and actually deploying the KFOR strategic reserve to Kosovo. Poland is a strong ally of the US in Europe and leads the Multinational Division Central South in Iraq.
Administrative divisions
Poland is divided in 16 provinces or Voivodeships (województwa, singular - województwo); Lower Silesia, Kuyavia-Pomerania, ?ód?, Lubelskie, Lubusz, Lesser Poland, Masovia, Opole, Subcarpathia, Podlachia, Pomerania, Silesia, ?wi?tokrzyskie, Warmia-Masuria, Greater Poland, and West Pomerania.
Links about the Polish government:
www.kprm.gov.pl/english/
www.president.pl/x.node?id=479
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_government_in_exile
This article interests me, because it gives a realistic and practical
insight of the Polish system. However it is written in English and
I can't check if it is comparable with the Polish information?
I am always aware that when I read articles, essays, texts or
letters in Dutch, English, German or even French that they are
written in a foreign perspective, from abroad.
I often witness differances in between the English or Dutch
version of Wikipedia and the Polish version.
The Polish version is often more comprehensive.
That can have to do with the fact that a majority of the English
or Dutch readers have no ties or links to Poland whatsoever,
and that therfor the information is limited and sometimes
not even there. Some subjects I could find in the Polish
version I could not find in the Dutch, German or English versions.
Pieter
Politics of Poland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Politics of Poland takes place in the framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Prime Minister of Poland is the head of government and of a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the Sejm and the Senate. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
Executive power is exercised by the government, which consists of a council of ministers led by the Prime Minister. Its members are typically chosen from a majority coalition in the lower house of parliament (the Sejm), although exceptions to this rule are not uncommon. The government is formally announced by the president, and must pass a motion of confidence in the Sejm within two weeks.
Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, Sejm and Senate. Members of parliament are elected by proportional representation, with the proviso that non-ethnic-minority parties must gain at least 5% of the national vote to enter the lower house. Currently six parties are represented. Parliamentary elections occur at least every four years.
The president, as the head of state, has the power to veto legislation passed by parliament, but otherwise has a mostly representative role. Presidential elections occur every 5 years.
The political system is defined in the Polish Constitution, which also guarantees a wide range of individual freedoms.
The judicial branch plays a minor role in politics, apart from the Constitutional Tribunal, which can annul laws that violate the freedoms guaranteed in the constitution.
Recent Developments
In the autumn of 2005 Poles voted in both parliamentary and presidential elections. September's parliamentary poll was expected to produce a coalition of two centre-right parties, PiS (Law and Justice) and PO (Citizens Platform). During the increasingly bitter campaign, however, PiS launched a strong attack on the liberal economic policies of their allies and overtook PO in opinion polls. PiS eventually gained 27% of votes cast and became the largest party in the sejm ahead of PO on 24%. The out-going ruling party, the socialist SLD, achieved just 11%.
Presidential elections in October followed a similar script. The early favourite, Donald Tusk, leader of the PO, saw his opinion poll lead slip away and was beaten 54% to 46% in the second round by the PiS candidate Lech Kaczynski (one of the twins, founders of the party).
Both elections were blighted by low turn-outs: only 51% in the second and deciding round of the presidential election and just over 40% in the parliamentary election. The suggested cause of the low turnout is popular disillusionment with politicians.
Coalition talks ensued simultaneously with the presidential elections. However, the severity of the campaign attacks and the willingness of PiS to court the populist vote had soured the relationship between the two largest parties and made the creation of a stable coalition impossible. The ostensible stumbling blocks were the insistence of PiS that it control all aspects of law enforcement: the Ministries of Justice and Internal Affairs, and the special forces; as well as the forcing through of a PiS candidate for the head of the Sejm with help of several smaller populist parties. The PO decided to go into opposition.
PiS then formed a minority government with the previously little-known Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz as Prime Minister instead of party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski who remained influential in the background. This government relied on the tacit and rather stable support of smaller populist and agrarian parties (PSL, Samoobrona, LPR) to govern.
The new government enjoyed quite strong public support (as is, in fact, generally common in the first few months after an election), while the popularity of the populist parties giving it support has significantly waned. With this background, a parliamentary crisis appeared to loom in January 2006, with these small populist parties fearing that PiS was about to force new elections (on which they would lose out) by using the pretext of failing to pass the budget within the constitutional timeframe. However, this crisis appears to have abated.
In July 2006, following a rift with his party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Marcinkiewicz tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and was replaced by Kaczynski who formed a new government.
Executive branch
Main office holders
President Lech Kaczynski (party) PiS 23 December 2005
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski (party) PiS 14 July 2006
The president is elected by popular vote for a five-year term, the prime minister and deputy prime ministers are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Sejm. The Council of Ministers is responsible to the prime minister and the Sejm; the prime minister proposes, the president appoints, and the Sejm approves the Council of Ministers.
Legislative branch
The Polish Parliament has two chambers. The lower chamber (Sejm) has 460 members, elected for a four year term by proportional representation in multi-seat constituencies using the d'Hondt method similar to that used in many parliamentary political systems, with a 5 % threshold (8% for coalitions, threshold waived for national minorities). The Senate (Senat) has 100 members elected for a four year term in 40 multi-seat constituencies under a rare plurality bloc voting method where several candidates with the highest support are elected from each electorate. When sitting in joint session, members of the Sejm and Senate form the National Assembly, (Polish Zgromadzenie Narodowe). The National Assembly is formed on three occasions: Taking the oath of office by a new president, bringing an indictment against the President of the Republic to the Tribunal of State, and declaration of a President's permanent incapacity to exercise their duties due to the state of their health. Only the first kind has occurred to date. Since 1991 elections are supervised by the National Electoral Commission (Panstwowa Komisja Wyborcza), whose administrative division is called the National Electoral Office (Krajowe Biuro Wyborcze).
Judicial branch
The judicial branch plays a minor role in decision-making. Its major institutions include the Supreme Court (Sad Najwyzszy), the Supreme Administrative Court (Naczelny Sad Administracyjny) (judges appointed by the president of the republic on the recommendation of the National Council of the Judiciary for an indefinite period), the Constitutional Tribunal (Trybunal Konstytucyjny) (judges chosen by the Sejm for nine-year terms) and the Tribunal of State (Trybunal Stanu) (judges chosen by the Sejm for the current term of office of the Sejm, except for the position of chairperson which is held by the First President of the Supreme Court). The Sejm (on approval of the Polish Senate) appoints the Ombudsman (Rzecznik Praw Obywatelskich, translates as Civil Rights Spokesman) for a five-year term. The Ombudsman's duty is guarding the observance and implementation of human and citizens' rights and liberties, as well as of the law, principles of community life and social justice.
Poland has a mixture of Continental (Napoleonic) civil law and holdover communist legal theory, although the latter is being gradually removed as part of a broader and ongoing reform process. The Constitutional Tribunal supervises the compliance of statutory law with the Constitution, and annuls laws which do not comply. Its rulings are final (since October 1999); court decisions can be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Developments since 2000
In the presidential election of 2000, Aleksander Kwasniewski, the incumbent former leader of the post-communist SLD, was re-elected in the first round of voting, with 53.9% of the popular vote. Second place, with only 17.3%, went to Andrzej Olechowski. It is thought that the opposition campaign was hindered by their inability to put forward a charismatic (or even a single major) candidate, as well as falling support for the centre-right AWS government. This was related to internal friction in the ruling parliamentary coalition.
The (then) fresh Constitution and the reformed administrative division (as of 1999) required a revision of the electoral system, which was passed in April 2001. The most important changes were: 1) the final liquidation of the party list (previously, some of the members of parliament were elected from a party list, based on nationwide voter support, rather than from local constituencies), and 2) modification of the method of allocating seats to the Sainte-Laguë method, which gave less premium to large parties. Incidentally, this change was soon reverted back to the d'Hondt method in 2002.
The September 2001 parliamentary elections in 2001 saw the SLD (successor to the communist party twice removed) triumph on the back of voter dissolusionment with the AWS government and internal bickering within that bloc. So much so that this former ruling party did not enter parliament due to falling below the 8% threshold for coalitions. (Symptomatically, they had failed to form a formal political party, which has only a 5% threshold, and formally remained a "coalition" of parties).
The SLD went on to form a coalition with the agrarian PSL and leftist UP, with Leszek Miller as Prime Minister.
A leading issue in the subsequent years was negotiations with the European Union regarding accession and internal preparation for this. Poland joined the EU in May 2004. Both President Kwasniewski and the government were vocal in their support for this cause. The only party decidedly opposed to EU entry was the populist right-wing League of Polish Families (LPR).
Despite broad popular support for joining the EU, which was considered an overriding issue, the government rapidly lost popularity due to incompetence on various issues (e.g. building of motorways, and a botched reform of the health system), a general economic slump, and numerous corruption scandals. The most famous of these were the Rywin affair (an alleged attempt to interfere with the legislative process, so named after the main suspect Lew Rywin) -- this case was investigated by a special parliamentary committee, whose proceedings were televised and widely followed), and the Starachowice affair (government ministers informed friends with links to organised crime about an impending raid).
In March some prominent SLD politicians and MPs (including the then Speaker of the Sejm: Marek Borowski) formed a split, creating the new SDPL party. The cabinet led by Leszek Miller resigned on May 2, 2004, just after Poland's admission to the European Union.
A new cabinet was formed, with Marek Belka as prime minister. After two initial unsuccessful attempts, it eventually won parliamentary support (24 June) and governed until the parliamentary elections in late 2005. Several of the new ministers were seen as non-partisan experts, and the government was considered a marked improvement upon the previous cabinet. This did not carry over into any rise in voter support for the SLD, however, even despite an economic upturn through 2005. Part of the reason being that this government was considered to be largely apart from the party backbone, and only held in office by the fear of early elections by the majority of the MPs.
A fear not unfounded, as the SLD saw its support drop by three-fourths to only 11% in the subsequent elections.
National Security
Poland's top national security goal is to further integrate with NATO and other west European defense, economic, and political institutions via a modernization and reorganization of its military. Polish military doctrine reflects the same defense nature as its NATO partners.
Poland maintains a sizable armed force recently counted at 175,343 troops divided among an army of 96,733, an air and defense force of 39,649, and a navy of 15,980. The Ministry of Defense has announced that the armed forces of Poland will number 150,000 by 2006. Poland relies on military conscription for the majority of its personnel strength. All males (with some exceptions) are subject to a 9-month term of military service.
The Polish military continues to restructure and to modernize its equipment. The Polish Defense Ministry General Staff and the Land Forces staff have recently reorganized the latter into a NATO-compatible J/G-1 through J/G-6 structure. Budget constraints hamper such priority defense acquisitions as a multi-role fighter, improved communications systems, and an attack helicopter.
Poland continues to be a regional leader in support and participation in the NATO Partnership for Peace Program and has actively engaged most of its neighbors and other regional actors to build stable foundations for future European security arrangements. Poland continues its long record of strong support for UN Peacekeeping Operations by maintaining a unit in Southern Lebanon, a battalion in NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR), and by providing and actually deploying the KFOR strategic reserve to Kosovo. Poland is a strong ally of the US in Europe and leads the Multinational Division Central South in Iraq.
Administrative divisions
Poland is divided in 16 provinces or Voivodeships (województwa, singular - województwo); Lower Silesia, Kuyavia-Pomerania, ?ód?, Lubelskie, Lubusz, Lesser Poland, Masovia, Opole, Subcarpathia, Podlachia, Pomerania, Silesia, ?wi?tokrzyskie, Warmia-Masuria, Greater Poland, and West Pomerania.
Links about the Polish government:
www.kprm.gov.pl/english/
www.president.pl/x.node?id=479
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_government_in_exile