Nelly Rokita

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Nelly Rokita (born Nelli Arnold, June 26, 1957 in Chelyabinsk, USSR) - Polish politician, elected an MP as a Law and Justice candidate. Her husband Jan Rokita was a prominent activist of a Civic Platform who retreated in September 2007 when Nelly started her political career. She was born in Soviet Union in ethnic German family, lived in Germany, where she obtained a university degree in Slavic studies. Rokita first visited Poland in the 1980s on a scholarship to the Jagiellonian University to study the language of political propaganda in the Polish People's Republic. There she met Jan Rokita, whom she married on July 26, 1994. He is her second husband. Before their wedding, Rokita converted to Catholicism, and her future husband became her godfather. She also has a daughter, Kasia, from her previous marriage.

During her time in Poland, Rokita edited the official party newspaper of the Conservative People's Party. She became a member of the Civic Platform, but withdrew from the party in 1997, claiming that her husband was marginalized in his own party by Donald Tusk, and that the conservative-liberal party was becoming increasingly leftist. Rokita briefly served as an advisor to Poland's president Lech Kaczyński on women's issues.