Word: sejm
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...agreement calls for reorganization of the Parliament with a strong President, expected to be General Wojciech Jaruzelski. The legislature will offer unprecedented power to the opposition: a re-established upper chamber, the Senate, will have 100 members to be chosen in free elections in June; the Sejm, or lower chamber, will retain its 460 seats, of which the majority will continue to be reserved for candidates representing the ruling Communist Party and its allies, but 35% of Sejm members will be freely elected. The pact even provides for opposition media, complete with a newspaper and regular television and radio programming...
...government would pay to win support for economic austerity measures. Last week, to just about everyone's surprise, the negotiators disclosed that they had agreed on a thorough reorganization of the political system. The reform would include the creation of a senate to complement the existing lower house, or Sejm, with members chosen in free elections, as well as the institution of a powerful presidency, with the officeholder selected by parliament. Said Jacek Kuron, a leader of the banned Solidarity trade union: "This is a step toward democracy, the like of which has never been taken before under this system...
...will mark the first time a Communist government has voluntarily ceded a major share of power to the opposition. Not only would Solidarity and other opposition groups be free to compete for seats in the 98-member senate, but there would also be liberalized elections to the Sejm in which non-Communists could win up to 35% of the 460 seats. The two chambers would then elect the President. Details of the pact will not be unveiled until April 3, but both sides have already agreed to June parliamentary elections...
...principal address to the Polish Sejm (parliament), Gorbachev profoundly disappointed even many conservative listeners by failing to deal forthrightly with the bitterest chapter in Soviet-Polish relations: the World War II massacre of 15,000 Polish army officers in the Katyn Forest, near Smolensk. The Soviets have long maintained that those murders were carried out by invading Nazi forces, but most Polish and many other historians believe they were ordered by Moscow. A joint Soviet-Polish historical commission was formed last year and given access to previously closed Soviet archives dealing with the matter. Many Poles had hoped that Gorbachev...
...outcome, however, was never in doubt. Though for most of the 460 seats at stake in the Sejm, or parliament, there was more than one candidate, only those approved by the authorities were elected. Jaruzelski was among 50 nationally prominent candidates who ran unopposed. Before the election, he had hinted that if 75% of the country's 26 million eligible voters turned out, he might offer amnesty to 280 political prisoners, although he did not specify when that might be. But Lech Walesa, leader of the banned Solidarity labor union, and other opposition figures called for a boycott...