Hanna Suchocka

Hanna Suchocka
5th Prime Minister of Poland
In office 11 July 1992 – 25 October 1993
President	Lech Wałęsa
Deputy	Henryk Goryszewski Paweł Łączkowski
Preceded by	Waldemar Pawlak
Succeeded by	Waldemar Pawlak
Polish Ambassador to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta
Incumbent
Assumed office 10 October 2002
Appointed by	Aleksander Kwaśniewski
Preceded by	Stefan Frankiewicz
Polish Ambassador to the Holy See
Incumbent
Assumed office 3 December 2001
Appointed by	Aleksander Kwaśniewski
Preceded by	Stefan Frankiewicz
Minister of Justice
In office 31 October 1997 – 8 June 2000
Prime Minister	Jerzy Buzek
Preceded by	Leszek Kubicki
Succeeded by	Lech Kaczyński
Personal details
Born	3 April 1946 (1946-04-03) Pleszew, Poland
Political party	Democratic Union
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Hanna Suchocka [ˈxanna suˈxɔt​͡ska] ( listen) (born 3 April 1946 in Pleszew, Poland) is a Polish political figure. She served as the prime minister of Poland between 11 July 1992 and 26 October 1993 under the presidency of Lech Wałęsa. She is the first (and, so far, the only) woman to hold this post in Poland and 19th in the world.

Suchocka is a specialist in Constitutional Law. She was a member of the Sejm of People's Republic of Poland in the 1980s, and became Prime Minister in 1992. She served as an anomaly in the representation of women, however, as she obtained her position partly due to her leaning to both sides of the political spectrum.

After the downfall of the Jan Olszewski cabinet on June 1992, following the exposure of a list of secret communist collaborators of Służba Bezpieczeństwa by Minister of Internal Affairs Antoni Macierewicz, her cabinet was allegedly linked to illegal persecution and disintegration of Polish conservative and independent rightist parties (so called Instruction UOP nr 0015/92).

Her left-wing leanings, accompanied by her strong anti-abortion position, made her the perfect candidate to satisfy the interests of a majority coalition in Parliament consisting of three parties including her own Democratic Union, the Christian National Union, and the Liberal Democratic Congress.

Member of the Club of Madrid.

Hanna Suchocka is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an international network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development.

She has been serving as Poland's Ambassador to the Holy See since December 2001 (so far under five different Governments) and is also a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Vatican (appointed by Pope John Paul II on 19 January 1994).

External links

• Suchocka's page at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences

References

Political offices
Preceded by Waldemar Pawlak	Prime Minister of Poland 1992–1993	Succeeded by Waldemar Pawlak
Preceded by Leszek Kubicki	Minister of Justice 1997–2000	Succeeded by Lech Kaczyński
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Stefan Frankiewicz	Polish Ambassador to the Holy See 2001–present	Incumbent
	Polish Ambassador to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta 2002–present