Ex-communist Europe
Czechs wince at reforms, frown at sleaze
Sleaze no, austerity maybe
Oct 26th 2010, 15:02 by K.Z. | PRAGUE AND E.L.
THE HEADLINE result of the local and senate elections in the Czech Republic (the run-offs were this weekend) was a defeat for the right-of-centre governing coalition and a victory for the opposition social democrats (ČSSD). Certainly the Civic Democrats (ODS), the biggest right-of-centre party, polled poorly. ODS lost the capital city, Prague, which they have run one way or another for nearly 20 years. Of the 27 senate places contested (a third of the 81-strong body's seats), ODS won only eight, against 12 for the ČSSD which has won its first-ever majority of 41 votes in the upper chamber.
That could be seen as a vote against the coalition's austerity package, which includes 10% cuts in public-sector wages from January. The government wants to cut the deficit to below 3% by 2013. The ČSSD says it wants to delay or block further austerity measures.
But the real picture is more complicated. For a start, the ČSSD was fighting from a low-tide mark. It was not defending a single seat. And though the senate can return laws it doesn't like (such as a planned pension reform) to the lower house, that is not an outright veto. The lower house of parliament, where the government has 118 votes (a comfortable majority) can simply vote them through again. The best (or worst) that the ČSSD can do is delay some of the laws on which next year's budget depends. The government now seems set on using a procedural measure designed for times of grave national danger to sidestep that.
What the senate can do is block amendments to the constitution, changes in election laws and military deployments abroad. The government also wants to introduce direct presidential elections, but such laws also require a two-thirds majority in the lower house, requiring at least two opposition votes to reach the 120 mark. And the ČSSD favours a direct presidential poll anyway.
More interesting for outsiders than the intricacies of Czech constitutional reform is what the result says about the general public mood. Here the message is less encouraging for the ČSSD. For a start, they did not win Prague: the mayoral crown went to Zdeněk Tůma, a former central-bank governor who was the candidate of of TOP09, a new anti-corruption party led by the popular foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg.
The ČSSD is the biggest winner. But TOP 09 showed that it was not a one-poll-wonder. In Prague it won 26 council members with 30.26% of the vote, against ODS's 20 seats and 23.2%, followed by the ČSSD with 14 (17.85%, and quite a good result in a traditionally right-of-centre city) and three Communists. An old Czech wisecrack is that (President Václav Klaus's tennis racket would win in Prague. The new joke is that Schwarzenberg's pipe can. It is possible that the two old parties (ODS and ČSSD) will hammer out a grand coalition and bypass the winner. That would dismay campaigners hoping for a clean-out in the cosy pathways of municipal government. Mr Tůma, a rather dry figure, says he will do a deal with ODS if they will purge their ranks of the so-called "godfathers" from the past. If ODS is willing to do that, it may mark the start of the party's rehabilitation in the eyes of clean-minded voters, who punished members of the ODS old guard in other municipal elections too (often in favour of independent anti-corruption candidates).
TOP 09 also won the southern Moravian town of Zlin (in alliance with local independents) but its caucus in the senate actually shrunk as the party was defending five seats and won only two. An anti-corruption group from northern Bohemia won two seast in the upper chamber, which may provide some company.
However TOP 09's result was stellar compared with the other new party, Public Affairs (VV in Czech), the junior partner in the coalition, which did spectacularly badly in all the elections. It failed to win a single senate seat. that is a big personal setback for its leader and founder, the former investigative journalist Radek John, whose campaign-trail style has not worked well in his job as interior minister. A newspaper poll put him as the most unpopular member of the government. Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog, criticised his anti-sleaze plan saying it was too punitive and not focussed on preventing corruption. A planned cut in police officers' salaries is also unpopular.
Mr John seemed to be flailing on election night, when despite repeated news reports to the contrary, he kept claiming that the election results were a triumph. At one point he said it was better for his party not to be represented in the city councils being contested. Some may wonder if the same will soon be true of its presence on the national stage.
Eastern approaches deals with the economic, political, security and cultural aspects of the eastern half of the European continent. It incorporates the long-running "Europe.view" weekly column. The blog is named after the wartime memoirs of the British soldier Sir Fitzroy Maclean.
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Thank you for a good and informative article. Here are a few things I think should be mentioned:
1) These were the first Senate elections in which ODS didn't profit from the usual fall in turnout in the second round. In the past, ODS counted on the fact that only voters who are really interested in politics bother voting in the second round - and these voters tend to be centre-right oriented in the Czech Republic. This in the past allowed ODS to wipe the floor with its left wing rivals in the 2nd round.
Not any more. It's clear that ODS's reputation has been gravely damaged and the centre-right voters are now reluctant to support it. It's another very strong signal to the new leadership of the party that it has to purge itself from corruption-inclined individuals.
2) TOP09 didn't do better because it is still a relatively new party. The two-round majority voting system for Senate elections is usually really cruel to all but the two strongest, most established parties. As for the "Public Affairs", the party has received a lot of media attention since the general elections and much of it wasn't really positive. Most of its voters probably feel cheated by what appears to be a large lobbyist group rather than a real political party.
3) Severocesi.cz is an ultra-populist platform composed of recycled politicians whose background is very suspicious - one of their 2 elected Senators is a former KSČM (the Communist Party) member. One political commentator has dubbed it a "northern Bohemian version of the Public Affairs party", and I believe he was right to do so.
4) It will be interesting to see how the new Senators will actually behave. In the past, the Senate used to be very independent-minded and Senators often defied party lines they were supposed to follow. For instance, there was a real possibility that ODS Senators could have voted against the Lisbon treaty, although their party was officially supporting it.
Today there was a vote about further extension and expansion of Czech military presence in Afghanistan. Although ČSSD opposes sending more troops, many of its Senators voted for the government's proposal. I hope they stick to their guns and refuse the sort of blind obedience the party leadership demands of them. We need the Senate to remain independent and constructive guardian of our democracy.