Fischer caretaker government to receive seal of approval from parliament

Sunday night is election night in the Czech Republic – at least that’s when the results of Friday and Saturday’s elections to the European Parliament will be revealed. But Sunday will also see another important vote here – a vote of confidence in the caretaker government of Jan Fischer. Parliament doesn’t usually meet at weekends – so why now?

The government was appointed on May 8th, and according to the Czech constitution a new government must pass a vote of confidence in the lower house within 30 days or resign. The individual parties didn’t want a vote before the European Parliament elections, for fear of it becoming entangled in the election campaign. The only possible date after the elections was Sunday June 7th – exactly 30 days since the government was appointed.

MPs might not be very happy about it, but they will meet on Sunday, at 2pm, for the first time ever it seems. The vote might, at least, be mercilessly short and sweet, so deputies can get back to their weekend.

Jan Fischer votes for the European elections, photo: CTK

This is a caretaker government with a limited mandate. It was created by the two biggest parties as a stop-gap solution to lead the country until early elections in October. Chief among the government’s priorities will be tackling the effects of the economic crisis, completing the Czech presidency of the EU - which ends in 25 days anyway - and coming up with a state budget for 2010.

So there will be nothing that could be interpreted as overly political - no bold reforms of healthcare or social security for example, although the Fischer government may try and crack down on far-right extremists who’ve been very active of late. The government is only around until October, and seeing as this country virtually shuts down in the summer, there really isn’t time for it to do much anyway.

A yes vote on Sunday seems like something of a foregone conclusion. The constitution says a simply majority of MPs present in the 200-seat lower house is needed for a confidence vote to pass. The centre-right Civic Democrats and the centre-left Social Democrats have already said they will support the government - albeit with a few misgivings - and they have 149 MPs between them, so what the other parties do is irrelevant.