engineer entrepreneur politician
Borawski was born on 17 April 1946 in Świdry Podleśne, in Gmina Grabowo, Poland. He was born in the years immediately following the Second World War, when Poland was rebuilding its agricultural economy and its rural communities. His later career combined agricultural industry with political representation of the countryside, a connection that reflects the rural setting of his birthplace.
Borawski studied at the Akademia Rolniczo-Techniczna w Olsztynie (Agricultural-Technical Academy in Olsztyn), where he completed a degree in food technology. The institution was founded on 31 May 1950 as the Wyższa Szkoła Rolnicza w Olsztynie (Higher School of Agriculture in Olsztyn). It was formed from two closed agricultural colleges, in Łódź and Cieszyn, whose book collections were transferred to the new school.
The school was raised to academy status and renamed the Akademia Rolniczo-Techniczna in 1972, the year Borawski received his engineering qualification in food technology. Its Faculty of Dairy and Food Technology, known in Polish as Wydział Technologii Mleczarstwa i Żywności, prepared specialists for the dairy and food-processing industries that were central to the country's rural economy. In 1999 the academy merged with other Olsztyn institutions to form the University of Warmia and Mazury.
Borawski began his professional career in the dairy cooperative sector in southeastern Poland. He worked as vice-president of the Sanok Dairy Cooperative and later as president of the Krosno Dairy Cooperative. Dairy cooperatives were member-owned enterprises that collected milk from farmers and processed it into dairy products.
In 1982 he became chairman of the management board of the Okręgowa Spółdzielnia Mleczarska (District Dairy Cooperative) in Grajewo, northeastern Poland, which later operated as Mlekpol. The Grajewo dairy plant had been established in 1976, and the cooperative itself was formed on 12 November 1980. The first milk was processed at the Grajewo plant on 4 July 1982 under his professional supervision.
Mlekpol developed through consolidation and modernisation in the following decades. By the 2000s it had become a leading producer in the Polish dairy industry, and today it is recognised as one of Poland's largest milk and dairy product manufacturers.
Borawski entered national politics in 2001, when he was elected to the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, the lower chamber of the Polish parliament, for the Białystok constituency with 7,727 votes. He was re-elected in 2005 with 5,311 votes, and in 2011 he won 11,759 votes in the same constituency. His parliamentary work included membership of committees on agriculture and rural development, health, environmental protection, the state treasury, and economic affairs.
Borawski is a member of the Polish People's Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, PSL), and he was elected to the Sejm from the party's list in the Białystok constituency. He was previously a member of the United People's Party (Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe, ZSL), the former communist-era peasant party, and he has belonged to PSL since 1990.
PSL was formed in 1990 as the organisational successor to ZSL, although it presented itself as heir to the pre-communist agrarian movement dating back to the nineteenth century. The party was created from a 1989 merger of several peasant groupings that helped form the first postwar noncommunist government in Poland together with the Solidarity movement. Its support peaked in the 1993 parliamentary election, when it won 15.4 percent of the vote and 132 seats in the Sejm.
In the 2005 general election PSL won about 7 percent of the vote and 25 seats in the Sejm, and in 2011 it took 8.36 percent and 28 seats. In these years the party repeatedly entered ruling coalitions with Civic Platform, which placed PSL in a governing role at national and regional levels. Its political profile was agrarian and centred on the interests of farmers and rural communities.
Borawski is documented as married.
