LECH WAŁĘSA, the Polish shipyard worker who toppled a Communist-ruled government, is visiting the Philippines on the third week of January for a series of speaking engagements before local business groups and executives.
Now 75 years old, Wałęsa (pronounced va-wue-sa) is a retired politician who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and served as president of Poland from 1990 to 1995.
“He is old, but still does some speaking engagements around the world,” said Polish author Maciej Podhajski, who is in the country and is working in coordination with the Czech Embassy for logistic support to bring Wałęsa—one of the world’s champions of democracy—to the Philippines.
In an exclusive media briefing, Podhajski shared that Wałęsa will speak “before some very important persons to inspire business people about his philosophy for success.”
Podhajski confirmed he was able to convince Wałęsa to visit the country after three months of negotiation. The former Polish president will be according an exclusive sit-down with the BusinessMirror as well as its sister media outlets under the Aliw Media Group Inc.
The author said Wałęsa was a friend to Pope Saint John Paul II, a fellow Polish citizen who served as Pope of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City from 1978 to 2005.
Wałęsa was a former labor activist who cofounded and headed Solidarity (Solidarność in Polish), the Soviet bloc’s first independent trade union.
While working at the Lenin Shipyard (now Gdańsk Shipyard), Wałęsa, an electrician, became a trade-union activist for which he was persecuted by Communist authorities, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and afterward was arrested several times.
In August 1980 he brokered a deal that led to the groundbreaking Gdańsk agreement between striking workers and the government.
In the Polish general election of 1990, Wałęsa ran and won as president of Poland.
He presided over his country’s transition from communism to a post-communist state. Thereafter, his popularity waned, and his role in Polish politics diminished when he narrowly lost the 1995 presidential election.
After martial law was imposed in Poland and Solidarity was outlawed, Wałęsa was again arrested. Released from custody, he continued his activism and was prominent in the establishment of the 1989 Round Table Agreement that led to semi-free parliamentary elections in June 1989 and to a Solidarity-led government.
Wałęsa was born on September 29, 1943, in then-German-occupied Popowo, Poland.
Image credits: Nonoy Lacza