The Third Republic of Poland
After the PZPR was dissolved, Leszek Miller became a co-founder of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (till March 1993, he was Secretary General, then Deputy Chairman and, from December 1997, the Chairman of that party). In December 1999, at the Founding Congress of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), he was elected its Chairman, holding the function continuously till February 2004. In 1997-2001 he was the Chairman of the SLD’s caucus.
In 1989, he ran unsuccessfully for Senate as a representative of the Skierniewice Province. In subsequent elections (1991), Leszek Miller was a leader on the election list of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic in Łódź and, following a considerable success in elections, he won a seat in the Sejm, becoming Chairman of the Parliamentary Group of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic. In three subsequent elections to the Sejm, he ran all the time from Łódź, each time gaining more and more votes (from 50 thousand in 1991 up to 146 thousand in 2001); he held a seat in Parliament till 2005.
Through all that time he remained one of the leading politicians on the left wing. In early 90’s, together with Mieczysław Rakowski, he was suspected in the case of the, so-called, “Moscow loan”. After revealing that affair in 1991, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz called Miller to abstain from taking an MP’s oath due to accusations laid against him. When Leszek Miller got cleared of the charges, Prime Minister Cimoszewicz appointed him later as the Minister in Charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers and in 1997 the Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration in his government. In turn, Cimoszewicz became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Leszek Miller’s cabinet.
In 1993-1996, Miller was the Minister of Labour and Social Policy in the governments of Waldemar Pawlak and Józef Oleksy respectively. In 1996, he was nominated as Senior Minister in charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers. He then got the nickname “The Chancellor”.
Leszek Miller played an important role in concluding the case of Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, for which he was severely criticised within his political circle. A similar disapproval was expressed after Miller’s support for the Concordat and the candidature of Prof. Leszek Balcerowicz to the position of President of the National Bank of Poland.
During the period of the Solidarity Electoral Action’s government, Leszek Miller was in charge of the parliamentary opposition, leading the political fight with the governing party. He was also consolidating the majority of significant left-wing groups around his person. In 1999, he succeeded in establishing one uniform political party – the Democratic Left Alliance – which turned out to be very successful in following elections.
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