Aleksander Kwaśniewski (Polish pronunciation: [alɛˈksandɛr kfaˈɕɲɛfskʲi] ⓘ; born 15 November 1954) is a Polish politician and journalist who served as the third president of Poland from 1995 to 2005.
Kwaśniewski served as a minister in the communist government during the 1980s, and later led the post-communist centre-left Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland, a successor to the former ruling Polish United Workers' Party, and a co-founder of the Democratic Left Alliance. In 1995, he was elected to the presidency, defeating the incumbent, Lech Wałęsa, and was re-elected in 2000 in a decisive first-round victory. His presidency was marked by modernization of Poland, rapid economic growth (Poland's GDP doubled in ten years), the drafting of a new constitution (1997), and the accession of Poland to NATO (1999) and the European Union (2004).[2][3] In 2004, he brokered a pro-democratic agreement during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
According to a 2020 poll conducted by Rzeczpospolita, Kwaśniewski was considered the best president in the post-1989 history of Poland by a plurality of Poles, albeit tied with the two PiS presidents, Andrzej Duda and Lech Kaczyński respectively, taken together.
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