Lech Walesa won Poland's first direct presidential election

On December 9, 1990, Lech Walesa was elected president of Poland, winning the country’s first-ever direct presidential election. The founder of the Solidarity trade union, an electrician by trade at the Gdansk shipyard, took office as the first Polish head of state chosen by popular vote rather than installed by a communist party or parliament.

The contest went to a runoff. In the second round Walesa won in a landslide, roughly 74 percent to about 26 percent for the émigré businessman Stanislaw Tyminski — the widest margin in the nation’s electoral history. The earlier favourite, sitting prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, had been knocked out in the first round.

A man who began by climbing a shipyard fence ended up winning the highest office his country could offer.

Walesa’s victory capped the peaceful unravelling of communist rule that Solidarity had set in motion, and confirmed Poland’s place at the front of Central Europe’s democratic transformation after 1989.