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Reuters
WARSAW — Lech Walesa, former Polish president and leader of the Solidarity Trade Union that played a leading role in the fall of communism, has been hospitalized with an infectious disease and will remain there for at least a week.
Originally an electrical engineer at a shipyard in the northern port city of Gdansk, Walesa has become a symbol of the historic change that ended the Cold War and freed the nation. He led the solidarity trade union movement that brought about the shift to a market economy. 1989.
Walesa posted a photo of himself lying in a hospital bed on Sunday on his Facebook with the caption, "It happens."
A spokesman for the 78-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner told Reuters that Walesa had been infected and would be hospitalized this week, but did not provide further information.
Walesa said he had a COVID infection in January. He has fallen ill in recent years and underwent heart surgery in 2021.
He served as president from his 1990 to 1995, becoming Poland's first leader after communism.
In recent years he has been an outspoken critic of Poland's ruling nationalist party, Law and Justice (PiS), which has been deeply critical of the transition from communism to Walesa's free market economy. I was. (Reporting by Joanna Plucinska and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Editing by Philippa Fletcher)
