Opinion polling reveals the Czech public holds a characteristically divided / balanced set of views the Russo-Georgian war: majorities disapprove of both Georgian intervention in South Ossetia and Russia’s response, with predictable splits on left/right lines and the usual swathe of ‘don’t knows’.
>Czech public blame Russians and Georgians alike
>Czech Republic (again): Prague mayor to challenge PM
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The Final Word scenario of a Klaus coup culminating in the CR being slung out of the EU, however, strikes me as a bit fanciful. I can fully believe that President Klaus would love to pull the strings from Prague Castle, intervening in politics in the just the way he also criticized President Havel for doing (I always though the charge about half justified). I wonder, however, whether there are really the votes in the Czech parliament to deliver a government with the ideological stamp of Klaus on it. The anti-Topolánek forces are also a disparate bunch and there is reason to suspect that some of Bém’s business/political dealings make him an accident waiting to happen.
There are also those who think that for all his unsophisticated bluster and lack of intellectual polish Topolánek’s perhaps soon-to-end tenure as leader did sketch out a political model for the Czech right that, if improved and adapted, could serve it give it a continuing voice in Czech politics: co-oridnated reforms off tax, welfare, and public services in a single package, a pragmatic mix pro-market policies with state intervention to support key groups working mothers and young people; an iinherent willingness to compromise with (and co-opt the agendas of) smaller parties like the Greens and the Christian Democrats; and, course, a junking of quixotic Klaus obsessions such as climate change denial, rants against multi-culturalism that does not exist in the Czech Republic, and grandoise fantasy visions of remade, de-integrated EU.
Topolánek, unluckily for him, was outplayed by a better, tougher leader in Jiří Paroubek and caught by circumstances no incumbent could control. If ODS descends into factional conflict, – and junks what passes for ideological debate in the party- as it threatened to do, but didn’t, following Klaus’s semi-forced departure as leader in 2002, then Paroubek may manage to establish the Social Democrats as the natural party of government in the Czech Republic, although global economic conditions and the problem of how to handle the Communists (already painfully evident in difficulties forming coalitions at the regional level) may make this less than straightfoward.
The future may be orange, but it isn’t bright.
>Czech Senate run-off elections: Orange wave rolls over the provinces
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Social Democrats 22 (I predicted 19)
Civic Democrats 3 (prediction 6)
Communists 1 (prediction 1)
Christian Democrats 0 (prediction 1)
The big story is the Social Democrats polled better than expected in the provinces, overturning first round Civic Democrat leads in three electoral districts. Especially notable is that they did so well in larger provincial towns and cities, winning not only in Zlín (where they had sitting a Senator) but also in Oloumouc, Brno and Plzeň which had always been fairly safe territory for the right and had elected right-wing Senators in 2002. They even managed to squeak in ahead of the Christian Democrats in their historic South Moravian heartland winning in Uherské Hradiště by half a percent. Only in Prague did the right-wing vote hold up: all three seats in the capital were won by ODS by large margins, but these were the only seats they won. The future, at least in the provinces, is orange, the Czech Social Democrat have left red to the Communists, whose one 2nd round candidate, as anticipated, won in Znojmo by a country mile). And, just to complete the picture, I should that that old warhorse Jiří Dienstbier did win for the Social Democrats without too much difficulty in Kladno and thus returns to national political office some 16 years after being dumped out of parliament by Czech voters in 1992. However, his 56% of the poll in a bastion of the left was one of the Social Democrats less impressive results, so perhaps there were a few Old Bolsheviks out there who still have forgiven him for Charter 77.
So, should we get excited about the result? Predictably, Social Democrat leader Jiří Paroubek says that these results show that the current government is toast and that a caretaker administration of technocrats should take over to lead into early elections next June and allow the Czech Presidency of the EU to pass with dignity without being undermined by domestic instabilty. I personally doubt that such a dramatic scenario is on the cards. I dare say the current centre-right government will put out some feelers for a bit of bipartisanship on the Presidency – in truth, despite some differences of language, the two big parties’ priorities for the Presidency aren’t a million miles apart and the Czech Republic’s lack of real political clout in Europe means that the range of realistic goals any government could set is quite narrow.
On the other hand, the results keep up the pressure on the government and on Civic Democrat leader and Prime Minister Miroslav Topolánek and mark a significant advance for the Social Democrats, who have always previously failed to translate their position as one of the two big national parties in Czech politics into effective performance in the highly localized Senate contests. In a slightly more long term perspective the votes confirm some ongoing trends in Czech politics: the eclipse of small centre-right liberal parties (possibly we should include the Greens in this category too) and the creeping advance of the Social Democrats as an electoral force in South Moravia at the expense of the Christian Democrats, whose identity crisis these results will do nothing to assuage.
The only unpredictable factor, of course, is the global economic downturn. If Hungary does go the way of Iceland and the rest of the region catches cold, we may see some more dramatic shifts on the Czech political scene. My bet, however, is that if the economic chips are all down we would be more likely to see some kind of a government of national unity, than early elections. After all, what self-respecting party of the traditional left promised to defend ‘social certainties’ that Czech voters so prize would want to take over in such circumstances?
*One Social Democrat was elected with an absolute majority in the first round last week)
>Czech Republic: Klaus ‘anti-Gore’ role underlines marginality
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>Czech Republic: government survives – unimpressively
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And, of course, the government did survive – by 97 to 96 votes. But I was only half right. Social Democrat defectors either didn’t vote (2) or backed the government (2), but Tlustý and his allies abstained and two Greens didn’t vote. Presumably, some of them had calculated that although the government wouldn’t fall, it might just be politically humiliated and de-stabilized enough to give them additional leverage of various kinds. And, we should remember, if a formal vote of no confidence isn’t passed, it’s actually constitutionally very tricky to dissolve the lower house of the Czech parliament before scheduled elections.
My prediction, for what it’s worth, is that the 26 seats up for grabs will break down something like this Civic Democrats 7, Social Democrats 19, Christian Democrats and Communists 1 each. Contests to watch: Brno City (can the Civic Democrats pull in enough voters for other right0wing parties to overhaul the Social Democrats’ first round lead; Kladno – ex-dissident and former Czechoslovak Foreign Minsiter, Jiří Dienstbier had a narrow first round win standing on the Social Democrat ticker. He should win in the second round, if (and is that a big if?) Communist voters in this historically ‘red’ town overlook old emnities and vote for him.
>Slovakia and Argentina: the East becoming the South – or the North?
Slovak daily Sme discusses the parallels between Argentina, Iceland and Slovakia as small vulnerable economies and, specifically, the state taking control of the second pillar of a reformed pension system (compulsory individual savings). The global financial crisis is of course in a sense, good news for politicians with genuine etatist leanings such as Robert Fico, for whom the three pillar pension system left by radically reforming predecessor governing has become a real battleground.
>Czech Republic: Right hopes to deal sucker punch
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>Bulgarian pensioners get anti-crisis payment
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“About 350 000 Bulgarian retirees are going to receive a one-time allowance of BGN 50 with their November pensions as part of the government’s measures to tackle the consequences of the global financial crisis.
The news was announced Thursday by Bulgaria’s Labor Minister Emiliya Maslarova, who explained that all retirees whose monthly pensions were below BGN 113,49 would benefit from the measure.
However, the allowance will be paid per household not per person, i.e. a household with two retirees with pensions below BGN 113,49 would be entitled to receive only one BGN 50 allowance.
The allocation of the BGN 50 allowance was necessitated by the inflation of basic products and services in the recent months. The inflation compensations will cost the national budget about BGN 17,5 M.”
>Czech Republic: the political marketing wot won it for the left
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