The long wait for a new Czech President

Two sets of presidential elections - two inconclusive results this past January to find a successor to Vaclav Havel who stepped down on Sunday. The country is currently without a president and it may take weeks before it becomes clear just when - and how - the Czech legislature will try to elect a new one.

The long wait for a new Czech President

Sunday, February 2nd, was the last day in Vaclav Havel's final term as president of the Czech Republic, photo: CTK

It is a situation that the Czech Republic has never found itself in before: stalemate after not one - but two - election attempts that, for the time being, have left the country without a president. The failed attempts were a sharp contrast to Mr Havel's candidacies in 1992 and 1997 when he was the only obvious choice. Now there are none: with Mr Havel's tenure over, no candidate has appeared on the Czech political scene with enough moral stature and authority to gain support across the political spectrum. That said, there has been much effort by the governing coalition to try and find candidates to fit the bill, as well as to try and counter the Civic Democrat's Vaclav Klaus, the strongest candidate in previous rounds. The coalition is expected to decide on Tuesday whether to support one of three names discussed, academics known to the public but not affiliated with party politics: Ivan Wilhelm, the rector of Charles University in Prague, Pavel Klener, pro-rector at the same institution, and Helena Illnerova, the head of the Academy of Sciences. Is it likely the coalition will agree on one? To find out I spoke to political analyst Vaclav Zak, who began by evaluating January's failure to produce a president, and didn't think the ruling coalition's current candidate choices stood a very strong chance.

"Well, you see, the first two attempts were not seriously meant attempts - they were attempts about who shouldn't be president of this country, it was necessary to go through this durance. Now, they will slowly start to find a common candidate. There are several weeks and I think it won't be easy to agree on somebody and it will take time, so I don't suppose that these that are named are final names and we shall see. Maybe they will be able to agree on somebody. They are seriously, seriously trying to."

But you are sceptical that any decision on the three current choices would come today...

"Yes, yes, I am sceptical."

There is no person at the moment on the Czech political scene who would capture the imagination of most Czechs, that most people could envision in the seat of the presidency...

"Yes, it's a problem, but it can be overcome. The problem is that Czechs must get accustomed to it. So, it means that the next elections will be organised after some weeks, and if they will agree on some name they will have to introduce him to the general public and get them accustomed that such a person could be the president. I think that there are people who are eligible, for example, Mr Rychetsky is a political representative who has very good prestige in all political parties because he's one of the best lawyers in this country. So, they can find somebody."

In a way though, given that two previous elections did end in stalemate, wouldn't it be better to already start moving towards direct presidential elections?

"Well, of course, we can follow the Slovak way, so to speak, they were unable to elect their president as well so they organised direct elections. But, in our constitution it is a dangerous situation: the Czech president has large competencies that are not usual in any other countries in Europe, so we should change the constitution before we would go to direct elections. It will be extremely difficult - it would take a lot of time before the political parties would agree on changes to the constitution, so the situation is not so simple."

Critics charge however that there is another reason why the ruling coalition is scrambling to try and find a joint candidate in a third round of the current system for electing the president: recent opinion polls have shown that the majority of the public would favour a direct vote, and the name of the controversial Vaclav Klaus came up as most likely to win.