In November 1990, Poland held its first direct presidential elections. Lech Walesa, human rights activist and former leader of the Solidarity party, became the first elected president with over 70% of the vote.

Born in Popovo, Poland in 1943, Walesa joined the Lenin shipyard in Gdańsk in 1967 as an electrician, then led the shipyard workers to strike against the government in 1970, for which he spent a year in prison. In 1980, the Lenin shipyard workers in Gdańsk went on strike again; this is when Solidarity, headed by Walesa, was formed. This was the first independent trade union not controlled by the Communist Party in Eastern Europe, and led to an anti-communist-socialist movement in Poland. As a result, Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

In February 1989, the Polish ruling party held the Polish Round Table Agreement with Solidarity and other opposition parties. The Round Table Agreement resulted in reforms to the presidential system and to parliamentary democracy.

During Walesa's five-year presidency, Poland gradually transformed from a socialist planned economy to a market economy. Poland joined the European Union in 2004. Also in 2004, Gdańsk's airport was renamed Lech Walesa Airport, in his honor. However, his popularity gradually declined due to a divergence between his political views and those of Solidarity's new leadership, as well as due to the painful period of change in national systems that did not immediately raise the people's standards of living. In 1995, Walesa ran for re-election and lost to Aleksander Kwaśniewski, a leftist candidate. In 2000, he ran for election again but won only 1% of the vote.

References: [維基百科("Wikipedia")(Chinese)] (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/莱赫·瓦文萨); [中央社("Central News Agency")(Chinese)] (https://www.cna.com.tw/news/firstnews/201906040093.aspx); [The Nobel Prize: Lech Walesa - Biographical] (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1983/walesa/biographical/)