The Polish politician Andrzej Lepper, who has died aged 57, was the leader of the populist Self-Defence (Samoobrona) party and a former deputy prime minister of his country. His body was found in his party's Warsaw headquarters, where he had apparently taken his own life.
Lepper transformed Polish political life in 2001, when Self-Defence first entered parliament. The party presented itself as a "third way", differing from the post-communist and rightwing parties which emerged from the Solidarity trade union, merging catholic and anti-EU rhetoric with leftwing economics. Lepper was appointed deputy speaker in October that year, but was removed from the post only a month later after he called Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz a "scoundrel", unworthy of being Poland's minister of foreign affairs. Lepper often boasted of all the cases filed against him in Polish courts.
Born in Stowiecino, northern Poland, to farming parents, Lepper was the youngest of nine children, three of whom died in childhood. In his adolescence, he trained as a boxer. He graduated from agricultural high school and was only 23 when he was appointed director of a state-run farm. In 1980 he bought his own land and started to breed pigs. The economic transformation in 1989 opened new possibilities, and Lepper planned to begin producing potato starch. He took a loan, but mounting inflation hindered his plans as interest rates rocketed.
Buried by debt, he established the Self-Defence farmers' trade union and in 1992 an allied political party, aiming to fight the political establishment, which he blamed for the farmers' plight. Soon after this, he launched a series of road blockades, which became his trademark, and gained national recognition.
From 2001 onwards, with the ruling centre-left rapidly losing popularity, Self-Defence was one of the prime beneficiaries of the shift in support. In the presidential election of 2005, Lepper won 15.11% of the vote, and he endorsed Lech Kaczynski in the second round, granting him victory. In May 2006 he formed a coalition government with the Kaczynski brothers' Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc) party and the nationalist League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin). He was appointed deputy prime minister and minister of agriculture in the government of Jarosław Kaczynski, the president's twin brother.
Lepper's popularity took a blow in December 2006 when the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza revealed that he and his colleagues had hired young women to work in the party's offices in exchange for sex. But it was only in July 2007 that Self-Defense was ousted from the cabinet, over allegations that Lepper had accepted bribes for altering the legal status of farm land to residential land. However, an investigation by the anti-corruption bureau failed to produce any evidence for these claims.
Self-Defence won no seats in the parliamentary election that October. Lepper ran for office unsuccessfully several times more, most recently in the presidential election of 2010. He received only 1.28% of the vote.
In February 2010 he was sentenced to two years and three months in prison for sexually abusing a former party employee, but appealed against the ruling. Colleagues said he had recently been depressed, suffering from financial problems and worried about his son Tomasz, gravely ill with liver problems.
He is survived by his wife, Irena, his son and his daughters, Renata and Małgorzata.