Stanisà Âaw "Stan" Tymià Âski (; born January 27, 1948) is a Canadian businessman of Polish origin, dealing in electronics and computers, and a sometime-politician in both Poland and Canada. Although Tymià Âski was born in Pruszków, he was a completely unknown person in his native country until shortly before the 1990 Polish presidential election, he emerged from the first ballot as the second strongest candidate; defeating liberal prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and forcing Solidarity leader Lech Waà ÂÃÂsa to stand a second ballot. After Waà ÂÃÂsa defeated him by a wide margin, Tymià Âski was a leader of Party X in Poland (1990âÂÂ1995) and then returned to Canada to resume his business activities. Tymià Âski also contested the 2005 Polish presidential election.
In 1990/1991, Tymià Âski led the Libertarian Party of Canada, a minor party which never received more than 0.3% of the vote. At the same time, he started a political career in his native Poland, where democracy had just been re-established and repeatedly ran for President, and was accused of hiding his Jewish heritage .
In the first free presidential elections on November 25, 1990, the two most promising candidates were Solidarity leader Lech Waà ÂÃÂsa and prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Waà ÂÃÂsa, 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.
Tymià Âski ran as a maverick candidate. He overtook Mazowiecki (18.1%) with 23.1% of the vote and placed second behind Waà ÂÃÂsa with 40.0%. As no candidate had achieved the absolute majority, a second ballot was required and held on December 9, 1990. In the second round, Tymià Âski lost to Waà ÂÃÂsa with just 25.8% of the total vote. The voter turnout in the ballots was 60.6% and 53.4%, respectively.
The reasons for Tymià Âski's unexpected success remain unclear. Tymià Âski promised to create wealth for everyone quickly, and had an image as a patriotic Pole who had "made it" abroad. He was well received at a time when radical political changes were taking place, but the overall economic situation was getting worse: by the end of 1990, unemployment had increased from nearly zero to 6.5 percent, and gross national income had dropped by over 11 percent: the opening up of the economy had had a particularly negative effect on the standard of living for workers in sunset industries, small farmers and pensioners. Many people were increasingly disappointed with the conflict that had broken out within the former anti-communist opposition, making the unknown but seemingly honest and patriotic candidate appealing.
Another potential factor was that Tymià Âski 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 â 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. Tymià Âski's adversaries took to a similar strategy; the renowned daily Gazeta Wyborcza, which supported Mazowiecki, reported that Tymià Âski had had contact with the secret police apparatus himself, a story that was not withdrawn until after the elections. However, Tymià Âski did admit that several former colonels and lieutenant colonels from the Polish secret police were employed by his campaign, although he characterised this as an act of charity on his behalf. Meanwhile, during a televised debate with Tymià Âski ahead of the second round vote, Waà ÂÃÂsa responded to Tymià Âski's claim that the briefcase contained incriminating material regarding Waà ÂÃÂsa's private life by demanding that the documents be published immediately, which Tymià Âski declined to do.
Foreign policy analyst John Feffer, who described Tymià Âski as "...a rich businessman, an outspoken outsider with a love of conspiracy theories", has suggested that his 1990 campaign served as a prototype for later campaigns by right-wing populist politicians such as Viktor Orbán, Jarosà Âaw Kaczyà Âski and Donald Trump, by appealing to those who had lost out from the advance of globalization.
Tymià Âski, who had run as a nonpartisan candidate, founded a party of his own, which he called Party X, with a nationalist political profile. However, Tymià Âski's charisma did not translate into any long-term success for the party; in the 1991 general elections, his "X-Party" achieved just three seats in the Sejm. It did not contest any seats in 1997 and was formally disbanded in 1999.
On March 24, 2005, in an interview for a South American Polish organization, Tymià Âski announced his readiness to run in the upcoming 2005 Polish presidential election; an announcement he had previously made in more vague terms on his own homepage. On 3 June, Tymià Âski returned to Poland and officially declared his candidacy on behalf of a splinter party named the "All-Polish Citizens Coalition" (Ogólnopolska Koalicja Obywatelska). The party, whose acronym OKO translates as "eye", was founded by Wojciech Kornowski, a businessman who set up a network of eye surgery clinics in Poland. Kornowski, a former chairman of the Polish Employers Association (Konfederacja Pracodawców Polskich), has been trying to enter Polish politics for more than two decades by establishing contacts with completely different political milieus ranging from the communist Polish United Workers' Party in the 1980s to Andrzej Lepper's Samoobrona party. In 2004, his new outfit OKO received 0.6% of the vote in the 2004 European Parliament election in Poland. Refusing to make palpable political statements, Tymià Âski and Kornowski converge in their vague "pro-business" and "anti-establishment" message. Tymià Âski's campaign attracted some media attention.
In late July 2005 Tymià Âski was the first presidential candidate to successfully collect all 100,000 signatures making him an official candidate. During the first round of the 2005 Polish presidential election, held on October 9, Tymià Âski received 23,545 votes or 0.2% of all valid votes.
Tymià Âski was 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, when the national telephone company Telekomunikacja Polska S.A. (TPSA) offered internet dial-up service, Maloka closed down in 1996.
As of 2020s, Tymià Âski has been operating his computer business in Canada and writing columns for various Polish-language periodicals in Canada and the United States. He has also been a Trade Representative of Belarus in Canada.