Zeman pushed out of race in first round

Milos Zeman, photo: CTK

Over the last few days the former leader of the Social Democrats, Milos Zeman, held extensive negotiations with all the major players on the Czech political scene, and before the first round of voting in the presidential election on Friday morning it appeared he had some chance of winning. Dita Asiedu reports:

Milos Zeman,  photo: CTK
A few hours later Mr Zeman fled Prague Castle without talking to journalists, having been eliminated in the first round. What's more, it soon emerged that members of his own party - which in the 1990s he had done so much to make one of the biggest in the country - voted against him. Only a couple of months before the Social Democrats' next party conference, they are clearly divided, with one wing coalescing around Mr Zeman, and another around the current leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla, who was always opposed to a Zeman presidency. On Friday, Radio Prague spoke to several leading Czech politicians at Prague Castle, including Mr Zeman's former spokesman Libor Roucek:

"The fact is that for this round, the coalition parties didn't even attempt to choose a joint candidate. The Social Democrats came with presidential candidate Mr Zeman and the junior coalition parties voted for Mrs Moserova. So the coalition parties didn't even try this time. Most political parties will agree to try a third election, after which we shall see. Perhaps in the third round, the coalition parties by learning from the mistakes from the previous two rounds would try to present a joint candidate."

But political commentators believe that finding a joint candidate will not be easy as Friday's defeat of Mr Zeman was clear proof of the Social Democratic Party being divided and of Prime Minister Spidla and his anti-Zeman supporters not being as weak as suspected. Communist Party Deputy Leader Miroslav Ransdorf agrees with this theory but furthermore claims that there is another player on the political scene - Social Democrat Deputy Leader and Interior Minister Stanislav Gross - whose personal ambitions were most responsible for his party's embarrassing defeat:

"It is proof of a total dissolution of the Social Democrats. The wing of Mr Gross has denied the support of Mr Zeman and this will have very heavy consequences in the congress of the Social Democrats. Mr Gross has preferred his own ambitions to the ambitions of the Social Democrats as a whole. The private ambition of Mr Gross is to become Prime Minister and the leader of the Social Democrats. Now, after the defeat of Mr Zeman and the discrediting of Mr Spidla, he has the space free for his own personal ambitions."