Political system

Poland is a parliamentary republic with a president as a head of state, who is elected every five years in a popular election.

The leading institution is Prime Minister and Council of Ministers.

According to the constitution the President after general election appoints The prime minister and his cabinet from the majority coalition in the Parliament.

Current President is Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister is Beata Szydło.

The Parliament is two chamber system and consists of a 460 member lower house ( Sejm ) and a 100 member Senate ( Senat) The elections take place every four years.

Sejm is elected under proportional representation according to the d’Hondt method , with 5% election threshold.

Senat is elected under the first-past-the-post voting method with 2-4 senators elected from each constituency.

The last parliamentary election (25 October 2015) was won by the largest opposition party Low and Justice (PiS) with 37.6% of the vote
Civic Platform, the party that governed for the last eight years, got 24.1% of the vote.
Three other parties also won enough votes to get seats in parliament: a new right-wing party led by rock star Pawel Kukiz with 8.8%; a new pro-business party, Modern Poland, with 7.6%; and the agrarian Polish People's Party with 5.1%