Former Polish president and Solidarity hero Lech Walesa said Monday he was considering another attempt at a political comeback by running for president later this year.
Walesa led a labor union movement that helped topple communism in Poland in 1989, and was its first democratically elected president.
He lost narrowly to current President Aleksander Kwasniewski in 1995, but later comeback attempts failed badly, forcing the former shipyard electrician and 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner into semi-retirement.
"I will run for this office if I see that the Polish people are ready to give more power to the president," Walesa told Reuters after a lecture in which he suggested a political comeback.
"The nation wants another system. Right now there are probably around 35 percent who support my ideas, but I want 50 percent," he said.
Kwasniewski cannot run again after two terms in office and opinion polls suggest the presidential race in the autumn will be wide open.
Pollsters so far have not included Walesa as a potential contender in their surveys.
In a poll last year, 39 percent of Poles rated Walesa as Poland's best post-war leader, ahead of Kwasniewski but behind a communist leader he helped to oust in 1980.
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