Tadeusz Mazowiecki received a standing ovation at a special session of parliament today, twenty years after he became Poland’s first democratically elected prime minister following the fall of communism. 

Click on the audio icon above to listen to the report by Michał Kubicki.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk told Tadeusz Mazowiecki, parliamentarians, the President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek and other guests, including former president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski:

“With the advent of that government twenty years ago, we took responsibility for Poland,” he said.  “To guide her through a difficult and uncertain period when we were the one country that had stood up for freedom and taken on the building of a democratic state and legal system.”

Mazowiecki’s cabinet was sworn in on 12 September 1989, following historic elections in June, with 402 MPs out of 415 in the lower house, supporting the new government.

In his first speech to parliament back then, Tadeusz Mazowiecki employed the term "thick line" to denote where the communist past ended and where Poland’s new democratic future began:

 "The government that I am forming does not take responsibility for the present condition of the state left behind by former [communist] authorities,” he told the newly elected MPs. “It does, however, have an impact on the circumstances that we have come to act in. We hereby draw a thick line separating the past from the present. We will only account for what we have done to restore Poland from its current state of decline."

Strong words

In his speech to parliament today, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told Mazowiecki: “I remember how strong those words sounded, already having become a national legend: your President, our Prime Minister. I want to say that you will always be our Prime Minister.” 

Celebrations began with a documentary film of archival photographs and footage showing Cabinet members selected by Mazowiecki.

The Polish Post Office has released commemorative stamps with the image of Mazowiecki as a reminder of the events of 12 September 1989. (mmj/pg)