Editing Democratic Party – demokraci.pl (section)

===Alliance with postcommunists===
Hausner, on the other hand, is an economist with a post-communist background. As minister of economic affairs and employment in the governments of [[Leszek Miller]] and [[Marek Belka]], he conceived the so-called Hausner Plan (''Plan Hausnera''), a programme for market-socialist reform concerning state-owned business, public administration, and social security. After his reform met with persistent opposition, he left the SLD in a much debated move on 7 February 2005 and resigned from office on 30 March 2005.

From the beginning, Frasyniuk, Hausner and Mazowiecki appealed to Prime Minister Marek Belka to join the party. Belka, another former SLD member, had left the party in the early 1990s, but joined Leszek Miller's government as a non-party minister of economic affairs in 2001 before resigning the following year. After an interlude as economic director in the interim coalition administration of [[Iraq]] in 2003, Belka returned to Poland to become non-party head of an SLD minority government in 2004.

The involvement of Hausner and Belka as prominent post-communists marks a first in Polish politics: for the first time, a political party is created by members of the former communist government and former opposition members. Also, while the UW was a somewhat elitist party appealing mostly to educated and affluent urban voters, the PD is trying to establish itself as a populist party with a broad appeal, which caters for centrist social-liberals (Frasyniuk), pragmatic centrists with leanings toward economic liberalism (Hausner) and centrist Christian democrats (Mazowiecki).

As of 27 May 2005, the party claimed to have 13,000+ members, out of which 8,000 were members of the Freedom Union. It defined itself as, ''"above all, a group of young people not previously involved in politics, which at the same time is drawing on the best traditions of the liberal-democratic milieu around the Freedom Union"'' [http://demokraci.pl/index.php?do=standard&navi=0001,0007]. Despite this statement the party is made of several former politicians, who had run Poland before, as well as including ex-members of SLD who left the party when it faced a corruption crisis.

A manifesto entitled "Development through Democracy" issued by the party in February 2005 was signed by a broad range of Polish intellectuals and artists, including [[Pawel Huelle|Paweł Huelle]] (writer), [[Marek Edelman]] (physician, last surviving leader of the [[Warsaw Ghetto Rising]]), [[Agnieszka Holland]] (director), [[Marek Kondrat]] (actor), [[Kazimierz Kutz]] (director), [[Jan Miodek]] (linguist), [[Daniel Olbrychski]] (actor), [[Jerzy Pilch]] (writer), [[Henryk Samsonowicz]] (historian), [[Jerzy Szacki]] (sociologist). Lech Wałęsa's son [[Jarosław Wałęsa]] also signed the manifesto.