In the spotlight: Marek Jurek

According to an unofficial agreement between PiS and Civic Platform (PO) the post was supposed to go to a PO politician. By appointing Jurek, whose candidacy was accepted thanks to votes from Self-defense (Samoobrona) and the League of Polish Families (LPR), PiS prompted PO to break coalition negotiations and caused a serious parliamentary crisis.

Although Jurek's candidacy appeared out of the blue, the new speaker is not new to politics. Despite being only 45 years old, he is already a political veteran having won a seat in parliament in the 1989 elections. In the 1980s Jurek was a member of an opposition group called the Movement of Young Poland and as a student activist was one of the leaders of the strike at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. In 1989 he co-founded the National Christian Union (ZChN), within which he was a member of the most radical faction, which advocated basing the country's political system on Catholic values, respecting Christian values on television and was anti-abortion. He was also the source of a very controversial remark about the need to spank children as an effective way of raising them. Between 1995 and 2001 he was a member of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiTV) and for seven months in 1995 he was the council's president.