Turmoil in the Czech politics / Soucasna politicka krize v CR

Wow! The Czechs are going through some stressful times as far as politics goes! The Senate elections have been going on and in order for everyone to understand, let me do a tiny little review of the Czech political system. The Czech Republic is a pluralist multi-party  parliamentary representative democracy (big word, I know), which means that the Parliament is bicameral, devided into the Chamber of Deputies (Poslanecka snemovna; 200 members) and the Senate (Senat; 81 members). The Senate is elected for 6 years – every 2 years people vote 1/3 of the Senate members. And this year was the year.
The first and the second round won  the CSSD, winning 29 senators, while the senior ruling party, the ODS gained only 3 mandates. However, the ODS will still remain the strongest group in the whole senate (remember, the elections were held only for the 1/3 of the Senate, the 2/3 of the Senators remain unchanged). This crushing defeat of the coalition parties (including ODS) and the upcoming Czech presidency of the European Union (the EU presidency rotates every 2 years) caused an emergency no-confidence voting toward the current Czech government.

Fortunately,this center-right, ODS-dominating government did  manage to survive the vote. The drama is far from ending any time soon, however. The Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who is also the chairman of ODS, is in trouble.His party doesn’t trust him, the people don’t trust him. The smart thing would be to step down from his post but is he humble enough to do that? In the midst of the political turmoil, Topolanek has also canceled his visit to the USA where he and president Bush were to discuss  the financial crisis and the planned US anti-missile system. The trouble is, that it will be quite difficult to re-schedule this meeting as Bush’s term soon expires.

Crazy, huh?

CZ: Statni volby do 1/3 Senatu vyhrala jednoznacne CSSD. Zvitezila tak ve 22 z celkem 26 obvodu. ODS uspela pouze jen ve 3 prazskych obvodech, presto ale nadale zustane nejsilnejsi frakci v Senatu. Obcanske demokraty nyni ceka  po prohranych volbach diskuse o pripadnych zmenach ve vedeni strany. Predsedovy ODS, ktery je take premierem republiky, totiz  bohuzel jiz nikdo neveri. Nejen jeho strana, ale take vestina obcanu CR is mysli, ze sve poslani z mnoha duvodu selhal. Neuspech prvniho volebniho kola a nadchazejici predsednictvi Ceske Republiky Evropske Unii vedlo tento tyden take k hlasovani o neduvere vlady. Topolanke a jeho strana hlasovani prezili, ale soucasny vladni chaos se tim samozrejmne nevyresil. Diky teto neprijemne situaci premier Topolanek nedavno take  zrusil planovanou cestu do USA, kde mel diskutovat s presidentem Bushem soucasnou financni krizi a  budouci protiraketovou zakladnu. Bude ale samozrejme skoro nemozne, setkani s Busem zmenit, jelikoz jeho termin  je skoro u konce a zbyleho casu je velmi malo.

Sources:

http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/index_view.php?id=340715

http://www.praguepost.com/articles/2008/10/22/opposition-gains-clout-in-elections.php

http://www.praguemonitor.com/drupal/node/352

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_of_the_Czech_Republic