7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

Solidarity won an overwhelming majority of those seats
in June 1989, and after Wałęsa refused to form a coalition
government with the Communists, the Parliament was
forced to accept a Solidarity-led government—though
Wałęsa himself refused to serve as premier.
Wałęsa helped his Solidarity colleague Tadeusz
Mazowiecki become premier of this government in 1989,
but he ran against Mazowiecki for president in 1990
and won Poland’s first direct presidential election by a
landslide. As president, Wałęsa helped guide Poland
through its first free parliamentary elections in 1991 and
watched as successive ministries converted Poland’s
state-run economy into a free-market system. Wałęsa
had displayed remarkable political skills as the leader of
Solidarity, but his plain speech, confrontational style,
and refusal to approve a relaxation of Poland’s strict new
prohibitions on abortion eroded his popularity late in his
term as president. In 1995 he sought reelection but was
narrowly defeated by the former Communist Aleksander
Kwasniewski, head of the Democratic Left Alliance.
Wałęsa ran for president once again in 2000 but carried
only a tiny fraction of the vote.

Aung San Suu Kyi

(b. June 19, 1945, Rangoon, Burma [now Yangon, Myanmar])

A

ung San Suu Kyi is a prodemocracy opposition leader
in Myanmar who in 1991 was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize. For much of the period since 1989, she has been
held under house detention by Myanmar authorities.
The daughter of Aung San (a martyred national hero of
independent Burma) and Khin Kyi (a prominent Burmese
diplomat), Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old when her
father, Aung San—then the de facto prime minister of
what would shortly become independent Burma—was