Andrzej Lepper

Andrzej Lepper, born in 1954, is the leader of Self Defence, an agrarian populist party with a mainly rural electoral base.

He completed his education at a provincial agricultural college, but never took his final exams. A farmer by trade, he went on to create the Self Defence party in 1992, and has been its leader since.

He was elected to parliament between 2001-2007, and briefly served as deputy Parliament Speaker. Between 2006-2007, Lepper was twice deputy prime minister and agriculture minister under Law and Justice coalition governments led by Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Early on in his political career, Andrzej Lepper had run-ins with the law, notably in the organisation of illegal road blocks in defence of farmers’ rights. In February 2010 he was sentenced by the courts, pending a final verdict, for his role in a sex-for-jobs scandal within the structures of Self Defence.

He is married with three children.