Sejm

The Sejm (Polish: [sɛjm] ), officially known as the Sejm of the Republic of Poland (Polish: Sejm Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej), is the lower house of the bicameral parliament of Poland. The Sejm has been the highest governing body of the Third Polish Republic since the transition of government in 1989. Along with the upper house of parliament, the Senate, it forms the national legislature in Poland, known as the National Assembly (Polish: Zgromadzenie Narodowe). The Sejm comprises 460 deputies (singular poseł, rarely deputowany), elected every four years by universal ballot. The Sejm is presided over by a speaker, the Marshal of the Sejm (Marszałek Sejmu). In the Kingdom of Poland, the term Sejm referred to the entire bicameral parliament, comprising the Chamber of Deputies (Izba Poselska) and the Senate, with the King presiding. It was thus a three-estate parliament. The 1573 Henrician Articles strengthened the assembly's jurisdiction, making Poland a constitutional elective monarchy. Since the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939), Sejm has referred only to the lower house of parliament. During the existence of the Polish People's Republic, the Sejm, then a unicameral parliament, was the nominal supreme organ of state power in the country. However, in practice it was widely considered to be a rubber stamp legislature which existed to approve decisions made by the ruling party, the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), as a formality, and which had little or no real power of its own. With the collapse of communism in 1989, the Sejm was restored as the lower house of a bicameral, democratically elected parliament within a system of separation of powers between three branches, under the current Third Polish Republic.