Tadeusz Mazowiecki , 1989Today marks the 20th anniversary of the appointment of Tadeusz Mazowiecki as the first non-communist prime minister of Poland, after decades of communist rule.
His cabinet was later sworn in on 12 September 1989, following elections in June, with 402 MPs out of the 415 supporting the new government.
In his first speech to parliament, Tadeusz Mazowiecki employed the term "thick line" to denote when 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. 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."
The government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki secured, in law, civil rights such as freedom of the press, the right to assemble, freedom of association. Mazowiecki also carried out a series of radical economic reforms – or ‘shock therapy’ - that lay the foundation for a market economy in Poland, initiated by the then Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. (ab/pg)