Social Democrats acknowledge defeat
Both rightist and leftist opposition parties beat the ruling centre-left coalition in the European Parliament election at the weekend, just weeks after the Czech Republic joined the European Union. With all votes counted, the parliamentary opposition parties won 15 seats to just four for the coalition. The left-of-centre Social Democrat party won just two of 24 seats on offer.
"That's right, we suffered heavy losses. It's a defeat for us. We are all disappointed, including myself."
How do you interpret the results?
"That's what we'll have to analyse now in the coming days and weeks. I think we should provide a clear cool results, see it in the context of the European elections in general. Because we could see a similar development in Germany where our colleagues from the German Social Democrats suffered similar losses, the Labour Party in Britain didn't do well either. So that's one level. The other level, of course, is the domestic Czech politics. We should look at our reform. My opinion is that we have to do the reforms. The reforms obviously are not popular but we want to reform the state of our public finances, perhaps we didn't explain well enough to the people why we have to do the reforms, what the results are. In the pre-election situation there were some statements, for instance by former ministers, current ministers, which didn't help the campaign, that's for sure. But as I am saying, it's a multi-level problem. We have to analyse it and that will be our task for the next days and weeks."
What do you think of the low turnout?
"The low turnout is another factor that increased our election losses. We had the experience in the past - that means the lower the turnout, the worse results for the Social Democrats. We saw in our Senate election, regional elections, local elections and a similar pattern occurred also now in the European elections. We should also look for the reasons why the turnout is so low. Again, in my opinion one of the reasons is that people are tired of reforms. We have been reforming - and I don't mean just the Social Democrats but all political parties, the entire political system - for 14 years. For many people the time is just too long. They want to see the results of the reforms. Many of our voters haven't seen the results yet. That's one of the reasons, no doubt."
