Prime Minister Spidla calls confidence vote in bid to reassert authority

Why did Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla call Tuesday's vote of confidence? His centre-left coalition enjoys a majority of just one vote in the lower house, so why risk bringing down his already fragile government? Rob Cameron joins me in the studio now - why was this vote called Rob?

Photo: CTK

Prime Minister Spidla called the vote in the wake of the election of Vaclav Klaus - a leading opposition figure - as the country's new president on February 28th. Mr Spidla's centre-left coalition has a slim majority in both houses of parliament, so it should have been a simple matter to elect their own candidate and prevent Mr Klaus from getting the post. But around two dozen coalition MPs and senators chose to defy Mr Spidla, and voted for Mr Klaus instead. And Mr Klaus became president.

So this confidence vote is Mr Spidla's reaction to that act of rebellion, which allowed Mr Klaus to become president?

Yes, though the confidence vote is as much about reasserting his authority over his own party as the election of Vaclav Klaus itself. Most of the 20 or so rebels who chose to vote in favour of Mr Klaus instead of the coalition's candidate were Mr Spidla's opponents inside his own party, the Social Democrats. They voted against the government in order to weaken Mr Spidla's position as much as possible, ahead of the Social Democrats' national conference at the end of this month, when Mr Spidla will have to defend the party leadership.

Right, but how bad is this split in the Social Democrats?

Well, it's hard to say. It's not that serious if you believe Mr Spidla and other senior members of the Social Democrat leadership, but then again they would say that. At the heart of matter is that a sizeable faction within the Social Democrats - loyal to Mr Spidla's predecessor Milos Zeman - do not like the current arrangement whereby the Social Democrats share power with two small right-of-centre parties. They're much more inclined to either some sort of coalition with Mr Klaus's own Civic Democrats, or a minority government supported by the Communists. Mr Spidla does not favour either of those two alternatives - for the time being at least.

So how does a vote of confidence help Mr Spidla's position?

It's a way of proving that (a) he is in control of his party, and (b) that the majority of the party back the current centre-left coalition. This vote of confidence is an effective method - albeit a drastic one - of reasserting his authority, which has been so badly shaken by the presidential election drama. He's saying to the rebels - "I know we don't agree on many things, but if you don't back me now, you will be responsible for bringing down this government, at a time when Czech troops are about to go to war in Iraq and three months before Czechs vote in a referendum on joining the EU. And - of course - you could find yourselves having to contest your own seats in early elections."