The Democratic Left Alliance
Democratic Left Alliance (Polish: Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej, SLD) is a Polish social-democratic political party. A coalition of left-wing parties used this name from 1991 to 1999. It was formally established as a single party on April 15, 1999.
History
Communist roots
Roots of the majority of DLA leaders are in the communist regime. Most of the members who established the party in 1999 had previously been members of post-communist Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland (SdRP).
Coalition
SdRP and some other socialist and social-democratic parties had formed the original Democratic Left Alliance as a left-wing coalition just prior to the nation's first free elections in 1991. In 1999 the coalition became a party, but lost some members.
At the time, the coalition's membership drew mostly from the Polish communist party, the Polish United Workers Party. An alliance between the SLD and the Polish People's Party ruled Poland in the years 1993-1997, however the coalition was defeated by the right-wing Solidarity Electoral Action in the 1997 election.
Electoral victory SLD formed a coalition with Labour Union (UP) before the 2001 election and won it overwhelmingly at last by capturing about 5.3 million votes, 42% of the whole and won 200 of 460 seats in the Sejm and 75 of 100 in the Senate. After the elections, the coalition was joined by the Polish People's Party in forming a government and Leszek Miller became the Prime Minister. In March 2003 PSL left the coalition.
Leader of the Democratic Left Alliance
Grzegorz Napieralski
Rywin-gate
By 2004 the support for SLD in the polls had dropped from about 30% to just below 10%, and several high ranking party members had been accused of taking part in high profile political scandals by the mainstream press (most notably the Rywin affair: Rywin-gate).
On March 6, 2004 Leszek Miller resigned as party leader and was replaced by Krzysztof Janik. On March 26 the Sejm speaker Marek Borowski, together with other high-ranking SLD officials, announced the creation of a new centre-left party, the Social Democratic Party of Poland. On the next day, Leszek Miller announced he would step down as Prime Minister on May 2, the day after Poland joined the European Union. He proceeded to do so.
Decline after Rywin-gate
In the 2004 European Parliament election, it only received 9% of the votes, giving it 5 of 54 seats reserved for Poland in the European Parliament, as part of the Party of European Socialists group. In the later 2009 European election the Democratic Left Alliance-Labor Union joint ticket received 12% of the vote and 7 MEPs were elected as part of the new Socialists & Democrats group.
Wojciech Olejniczak, the former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, was elected the president of SLD on May 29, succeeded Józef Oleksy, who resigned from the post of Polish Prime Minister due to alleged connections to the KGB.
After 2005
However it could not avoid from suffering a huge defeat in the 2005 parliamentary election, SLD only won 11.3% of the vote. This gave the party 55 seats, barely a quarter of what it had had prior to the election. It had also lost all of its Senators. In late 2006 a centre-left alliance LiD: Left and Democrats, was created, comprising SLD and some smaller left-wing and centrist parties. The coalition won a disappointing 13% in the 2007 parliamentary election and was dissolved soon after in April 2008. On May 31, 2008 Olejniczak was replaced by Grzegorz Napieralski as the SLD leader.
Ideologic stance
After the recent change of leadership the party is viewed as more conservative on social issues. New party leader described himself as Catholic and opposed right of gay people to legally adopt children, giving also a question mark on giving a legal status to gay couples living in Poland.[1]. In economic policy the party has a socialist or market-socialist stance.
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