Stanisław "Stan" Tymiński (born 1948) is a Canadian businessman of Polish origin, dealing in electronics and computers, and a sometime-politician in both Poland and Canada.

In 1990/1991, Tymiński led the Libertarian Party of Canada, a struggling splinter group which never received more than 0.25% of the vote. At the same time, though, he started a spectacular but short-lived political career in his native Poland, where democracy had just been reestablished.

In the first free presidential elections on November 25, 1990, the two most promising candidates were Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa and prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Wałęsa, the electrician, union leader and people's tribune, had the image of an emotional, shirtsleeves populist, while lawyer and former Solidarity legal advisor Mazowiecki appeared as a more respectable and intellectual, but also more formal compromiser.

Tymiński, initially completely unknown in Poland, ran as a maverick candidate. Against all expectations he, he overtook Mazowiecki (18.1%) with 23.1% of the vote and made it to a sensational second place behind Wałęsa with 39.96%. As no candidate had achieved the absolute majority, a second ballot was required and held on December 9, 1990. In the second round, Tymiński lost out to Wałęsa with just 25.75% of the total vote. The turnout in both ballots was 60.6% and 53.4, respectively.

In spite of his ultimate defeat, the fact remains that Tymiński had not only humiliatingly defeated Mazowiecki, one of the best-known and most respected figures in Polish politics, but also forced Wałęsa, who at that time many considered a national hero, to stand a second ballot.

The exact reasons for Tymiński's unexpected success remain unclear: It seems that his vague promise to create wealth for everyone quickly, supported by his image as a Pole who had "made it" abroad, was well received at a time when radical political changes were taking place, but the overall economic situation was getting worse. Also, people were increasingly disappointed with the trench warfare that had broken out within the former anti-communist opposition, so that the somewhat mysterious stranger "from straight out of nowhere" apparently had a considerable appeal.

Another potential factor was that Tymiński applied methods of political marketing which were unknown in Poland at that time. A key element of his campaign was a black briefcase he was rarely seen without - allegedly containing "secret documents" that were going to destroy his rivals' careers and that he would present when the time was due. Although the elections went by without the briefcase ever being opened, its presence secured constant attention.

Tymiński's adversaries took to a similar strategy; the renowned daily Gazeta Wyborcza, which supported Mazowiecki, reported that Tymiński had had contact with the secret police apparatus himself, a story that was not withdrawn until after the elections.

Enthused with his sudden success, Tymiński, who had run as a nonpartisan candidate, decided to found a party of his own, which he called Partia X , with a populist libertarian political profile as diffuse as its name. However, Tymiński's charisma as a self-styled political deus ex machina wore off too quickly to translate into any long-term success; in the 1991 general elections, his "X-Party" achieved just one seat in the Sejm. Tymiński withdrew from politics shortly afterwards.

Today, Tymiński is still referred to whenever somebody wants to point out a supposed underdevelopment of Polish political culture; critics of the populist "peasant leader" Andrzej Lepper often point to parallels between him and Tymiński.

A less known fact is that Tymiński was also involved in developing the internet industry in Poland: In 1994, he was the first to offer internet access "for everyone", included in Poland's first commercial Bulletin board system "Maloka" (see ). However, at 480,000 PLN per month, only few could afford this, and in 1996 Maloka closed down.

Today Tymiński writes columns for various minor Polish-language periodicals in Canada and the United States.

On 24 March 2005, in an interview for a right-wing South-American Polish organization, Tymiński surprisingly announced his readiness to run in the upcoming presidential election [1]; an announcement he had previously made in more vague terms on his own homepage [2]. (See reports by Gazeta Wyborcza [3] and Polish WikiNews [4]). Although Tymiński does not seem to stand a chance to repeat his 1990 feat, his campaign seems likely to attract some media attention against the backdrop of a heated current debate on the former secret police archives (see Bronisław Wildstein).

External links

• "No censorship" - Tymiński's home page with articles in PDF format in Polish and English