Characteristics
The core of the Democratic Party is made up by the members of the Freedom Union (Unia Wolności, UW), which had so far been the most important Christian democratic group in the Polish political landscape. Since its inception in 1994, the UW had to cope with internal frictions between various factions: liberal socialists (such as Leszek Balcerowicz), those proposing a more liberal economic agenda in a more conservative, bourgeois guise (such as Donald Tusk), more progressive social democrats such as Jacek Kuroń, and intellectual former civil rights activists such as Bronisław Geremek or Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who also has a strong background in liberal Catholicism and leans towards Christian democracy.
In 2001, these frictions - combined with the prospect of a devastating defeat in the upcoming election - led to an exodus of conservative and liberal conservative members around Tusk who joined former members of the UW's senior coalition partner, the conservative Solidarity Electoral Action, to form the new party Civic Platform.
Read more about this topic: Democratic Party – Demokraci.pl, History