Szydło, Beata Maria, 1963–, Polish political leader, grad. Jagiellonian Univ., 1989. A member of the conservative Law and Justice party, she was first elected to the Sejm, Poland's lower house of parliament, in 1995. She ran Andrzej Duda's successful campaign for president in 2015 and after Law and Justice won a parliamentary majority became prime minister later that year, replacing Ewa Kopacz. Szydło, who publicly led the party in the election, was regarded as a more popular face for Law and Justice than former prime minister and party leader Jarosław Kaczyński (see under Kaczyński, Lech), who remained the real power in the party and government. She served until 2017, when she was replaced as prime minister by Mateusz Morawiecki, the finance minister.
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