Ян Кшиштоф Белецкий: политик, экономист и премьер-министр Польши.

2nd Prime Minister of Poland

Jan Krzysztof Bielecki (born 3 May 1951) is a Polish liberal politician and economist. A leading figure of the Gdańsk based Liberal Democratic Congress in the early 1990s, Bielecki served as Prime Minister of Poland for most of 1991. In his post political career, Bielecki served as president of Bank Pekao between 2003 and 2010, and served as the president of the Polish Institute of International Affairs between 2009 and 2015. Since the early 2000s, Bielecki has been a member of the Civic Platform party. In 2010, the Warsaw Business Journal described Bielecki as one of the most respected economists in Poland.

Born in Bydgoszcz on 3 May 1951, Bielecki studied sea transport economics at the University of Gdańsk, graduating in 1973. For much of the latter half of the 1970s, Bielecki was employed as an economist at the Center of Heavy Industry, an applied economic research institute in Gdańsk. In 1980, Bielecki joined the Solidarity movement, taking an active role in the movement by providing it with logistical support.

Remaining outside of the state sector while also continuing underground support for Solidarity, Bielecki, along with other like minded colleagues from the University of Gdańsk (Uniwersytet Gdański), sought to take advantage of new economic reforms instituted by the communist government in the mid 1980s. These reforms replaced the direct administration of state enterprises with written regulations for managers. Using academic and personal connections from the University of Gdańsk, Bielecki established working relationships with Polish Ocean Lines and other state enterprises. In 1987, Bielecki organized his employees to create software simulating various strategies on wage tax liabilities. In the waning days of the communist state, Bielecki, along with fellow Gdańsk liberals Janusz Lewandowski, Donald Tusk and Jacek Merkel, founded the Gdańsk Society for Socio Economic Development, an informal organization of intellectual liberal dissidents, who became known as the "Congress Liberals." In the partially free 1989 parliamentary elections, Bielecki was elected to the Sejm as a member of the Solidarity Citizens' Committee. During the splintering of the Solidarity Citizens' Movement throughout 1990, Bielecki and other Gdańsk intellectuals increasingly favoured a liberal approach to reform the Polish economy. Congress Liberal members, including Bielecki, voted to create the Liberal Democratic Congress (KLD) in June 1990 in order to contest parliamentary elections. The new party advocated pragmatic liberalism, privatization, the expansion of Poland's newly free market, and European integration. The party, along with Bielecki, also supported Lech Wałęsa in the 1990 presidential election.

Following the resignation of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki in November 1990 after his resounding defeat in the presidential election, newly elected President Lech Wałęsa sought a new prime minister. Originally, the president appointed lawyer and former activist Jan Olszewski to the office of Prime Minister, though Olszewski quickly refused the position after numerous disagreements with Wałęsa over conditions the president placed on the prime minister's cabinet. Through these negotiations, Western Europe governments agreed to forgive 50 percent of the debt in the following month, followed by the United States forgiving 70 percent of its share, and Brazil with 50 percent. In regards to the regional administration, the Bielecki government proposed an overhaul of local government, arguing to replace the newly created rejony with county level powiats (counties), as well as proposing Poland to be decentralized into regions. The proposal called for the regions to be endowed with elected parliaments, answerable regional governments, and retain a regional central government presence. The idea was deeply influenced by the Länder (States) of Germany, envisioning a federalist model for Poland. Without parliamentary support, President Wałęsa advocated the Council of Ministers to grant itself special powers to rule by decree. While defending his decree proposal as only a temporary solution, Bielecki congruently proposed to grant the presidency special powers, including the right to nominate and dismiss the prime minister and members of the cabinet, as a measure of "preventing democracy from slipping into chaos and anarchy." However, neither the party, nor Bielecki, nor any other party, commanded a clear majority after the deeply inconclusive election, as Bielecki lacked support to continue the government. In the coalition negotiations that followed, the Liberal Democratic Congress pulled out of government formation talks with the Center Civic Alliance group dominated by the Centre Agreement, due to economic and cabinet differences between both camps. Bielecki remained as prime minister until being replaced by Jan Olszewski of the Centre Agreement on 6 December 1991.

As a member of the Sejm and one of the leaders of the Liberal Democratic Congress, Bielecki continued his support for stronger political and economic integration into Europe. During his post premier period in the Sejm, Bielecki served in the Committee on Foreign Affairs. During the early 1990s, Bielecki also strongly supported the Visegrád initiative with Czechoslovakia and Hungary, greater integration with NATO, and encouraged Polish political and economic policy to take inspiration from successful Asian Tiger and Latin American nations as positive examples. In July 1992, Bielecki supported the appointment of Hanna Suchocka as prime minister. Suchocka later appointed Bielecki as a minister without portfolio, tasked for relations with the European Community between 1992 and 1993 under a coalition agreement between Suchocka's Democratic Union and the Liberal Democratic Congress.