power than his military ministry nominally gave him. Post-Premiership Centrolew On 26 May 1926, Witos resigned as President of the Polish People's Party "Piast" shortly after his removal from power, though it was not adopted. He resigned in 1927 as President of the Małopolska Agricultural Society due to the limitation of state financial assistance. On 18 August 1927, the Krakow Provincial Office dissolved the Union of Commune Heads, which was created by Witos and operating in Lesser Poland under his own leadership. In the 1928 Polish legislative election, Witos successfully applied for parliamentary re-election as the member of the Sejm for the Tarnów district, by obtaining the largest number of votes for this constituency. On 9 April 1929, the Voivode of Kraków Voivodeship Mikołaj Kwaśniewski, removed Witos from the Tarnów local government board, to which he served as a member of this board since 1905. Witos remained in clear opposition during the Sanation regime. From 1929–1930, Witos was one of the leaders of Centrolew (), a coalition of several Polish political parties (Polish People's Party "Wyzwolenie", Polish People's Party "Piast", National Workers' Party, Polish Socialist Party and Christian-democratic parties). The coalition was directed against Piłsudski and the Sanation government. Witos participated, among others at the Congress of Defense of People's Rights and Freedom in Krakow (organized by Centrolew) in June 1930, during which he gave a speech. Brest trials The Polish Sanation government had invalidated the 1930 election results by disbanding the parliament in August and with increasing pressure on the opposition started a new campaign, the new elections being scheduled for November. Using anti-government demonstrations as a pretext, 20 members of the opposition, including most of the leaders of the Centrolew alliance (from Polish Socialist Party, Polish People's Party "Piast" and Polish People's Party "Wyzwolenie") were arrested in September without a warrant, only strictly on the order of Józef Piłsudski and the then Minister of Internal Security, Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski, accusing them of plotting an anti-government coup. The opposition members (who included Witos, and Wojciech Korfanty) were imprisoned in the Brest Fortress, where their trial took place (thus the popular name for the election: the 'Brest election'). The detainee (including Witos' inmates and opponents of the Sanation) were beaten and humiliated. Witos was ordered, among others manually cleaning latrines and emptying faeces buckets. A little later he was taken to the arrest in Grójec. On 27 November 1930 (the