Before #KPRM a monument to Prime Minister Jan Olszewski was unveiled. I trust that the values he cultivated: patriotism, sovereignty, dignity, democracy, will be the strength of our work, wrote the head of the Prime Minister's Office, Marek Kuchciński, on social media.

As Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki emphasized, it is not for Olszewski that this monument is needed, this monument is needed for us to remember the ideas he lived by, how important it is that we always stand on the side of good, on the side of truth, on the side of sovereign Republic.

Morawiecki recalled that a few days before Christmas in 1991, the government of the then Prime Minister Jan Olszewski was sworn in. "It can be said exactly 31 years ago that the mission of the first government elected in the democratic elections of 1991 began," Morawiecki said.

He stressed that Prime Minister Olszewski "always strived to make Poland truly strong, truly independent." Morawiecki added that Olszewski was convinced that only full independence would give Poland the right foundation for social, economic and national development. "It is to him that we owe the fact that a few years later, after setting the right path, Poland joined NATO, and also joined the European Union a few years later," stressed the head of the government.

The Prime Minister said that Olszewski always stood on the side of the independent Republic of Poland, whether as a young scout of the Gray Ranks, or later as an anti-communist underground activist, then a lawyer, prime minister, political and social activist. "It is not for him that this monument is needed, this monument is needed for us to remember about the ideas that Jan Olszewski lived, about how important it is that we always stand on the side of good, on the side of truth, on the side of the sovereign Republic of Poland" - Morawiecki argued.

On the other hand, Antoni Macierewicz, the head of the Ministry of the Interior in Jan Olszewski's government, referred to the inscription placed on the monument's pedestal: "Whose will Poland be...". “This basic idea, which is evoked by the very figure of Jan Olszewski, but also by the inscription on this monument (...) this question, this duty is to accompany every prime minister and government of the Republic of Poland. Whose country will Poland be - is the most important question facing us today, too, he emphasized.

As Macierewicz said, the activities of the Olszewski government "related to lustration and the elimination of Russian agents (...) were the basic idea, which he understood as necessary to implement the slogan: Let Poland be Poland." “Today, Jan Olszewski's courage and determination, dedication to the reconstruction of independent Poland is necessary even more than it has been in the last 30 years, because Poland is at the decisive moment whether it will be independent or will be included in the German formation created by the apparatus to be called the European Union," he said.

Jan Olszewski - Warsaw insurgent, defender of oppositionists in political trials during the communist period, prime minister in 1991-1992, advisor to President Lech Kaczyński - was born in Warsaw on August 20, 1930. In 2009, he was awarded the Order of the White Eagle. In the 1991 elections, he became an MP for the first time from the Center Agreement list. In December of the same year, he became the prime minister of the first non-communist government, endowed with a vote of confidence by the fully democratically elected Sejm of the Republic of Poland.

Olszewski's government collapsed after being recalled by the Sejm on the night of June 4/5, 1992, as part of the so-called night shift or night of files, after the implementation of the vetting resolution of May 28. It obliged the head of the Ministry of the Interior, Antoni Macierewicz, to disclose a list of politicians appearing in the archives of the Ministry of the Interior as informants of the communist secret services. This list included, then-president Lech Wałęsa, who on June 4 requested the prime minister's dismissal.

In 1989-1991 and 2005-2006 Olszewski was a member of the State Tribunal. On November 9, 2007, he took the position of the head of the verification commission of the Military Information Services, replacing Macierewicz in this position. In public statements, he supported the disclosure of the full report on the liquidation of the WSI. From April 2006, he was an advisor to President Lech Kaczyński.

Olszewski died on February 7, 2019 in Warsaw.