Tadeusz MAZOWIECKI, first prime minister of post-communist Poland has died.

Tadeusz MAZOWIECKI was a journalist and a politician in post-war communist Poland. As a catholic and writer in the catholic press, he had to put up with the totalitarism and the communist presence in the government and this created discordant strategies with mgr Wychnievsky, primate of Poland  who was more a partisan of the hard line against the communist regime.

During the communist period, Tadeusz MAZOWIECKI became member of the house of parliament, the Szjem, for the catholic party which was tolerated by the communist.

He was very impressed by the Gdansk shipyards strikes of 1980 which let emerge the personnality of lech Waleza, whom he was afterwards a close advisor of his movement Solidarnosc together with other polish intellectuals.

Before the regime collapsed in 1989, he took part to the round table between the communists and the opposition and he became the first prime minister of post-communism Poland in a mixed government with communists and persons backed by the Solidarnosc movement.

The latter political carreer of Tadeusz  MAZOWIECKI was less fruitful. he lost the presidential elections and later saw his role limited to different advisory tasks.

Poland will make him state funeral.

 

Miguel D. DESNERCK