Local elections and the first round of voting to a third of the upper house, the Senate, delivered a mixed bag of results over the weekend. Locally, the right wing Civic Democrats lost mastery of Prague to coalition partner TOP 09 and control of a series of other big cities, sometimes to the Social Democrats and sometimes to groups of citizens demanding change. Local factor often proved decisive in colouring the municipal map. In the Senate elections, the Social Democrats look well placed for the second round. Petr Just is a political analyst at Prague’s Metropolitan University and gave his take on who the main winner was from the polls.
Photo: CTK
“If you take the overall numbers, you could say the independents were the winners of these elections. If we only look at the bigger cities, then it is obvious that compared with four years ago the Civic Democrats (ODS) marked the biggest loss, the biggest failures, including losing the capital city, Prague, failing to win other major cities like Ostrava, Brno, Hradec Králové, Karlovy Vary, České Budějovice and so on. These are the major cities in the Czech Republic. On the other hand, the Civic Democrats were usually replaced by either the Social Democrat party or, in some parts, by the new TOP 09 party. So we can understand that the Social Democrats’ and TOP 09 success in these big cities can be seen as one of the results of the overall elections. Another aspect of these elections was the success of newly created citizens’ movements that won elections in a few bigger cities. And these citizens’ movements usually split off from the ODS during the previous term.”
Coming back to the capital, Prague, there the victor was TOP 09, what sort of coalition will be formed following the elections in Prague?
Zdeněk Tůma (TOP 09), Bohuslav Svoboda (Civic Democrats), photo: CTK
“If we look at the structure of the Prague assembly after these elections and if we leave aside the Communist Party and its three elected members, there are three relevant parties, or actors: TOP 09, the Civic Democrats and the Social Democrats. And, actually, any coalition between these three parties is quite possible right now. If I take the possibility with the highest chance, then I would say that the coalition of TOP 09 and ODS has the best chance to be formed though we are just at the beginning of the talks.”
Looking back at the Senate results and looking forward to the voting next weekend, do you think the government will lose its majority in the Senate?
“The Social Democrats have the best starting position as there are 22 candidates succeeding from the first round to the second round while for the biggest coalition party, the Civic Democrats, there are only 19. And there is one more complication: in a few regions the two coalition candidates actually face each other. There will be a few ODS, TOP 09 races which will be quite hard for the coalition.”
So what do you think was the main message from the weekend elections?
Social Democrats' leader Bohuslav Sobotka (center), photo: CTK
“The major message was that people really care about what is happening in their cities. It showed that the parties that worked well at a local level, parties that were not connected with any scandals, defended their positions and we can see several places in the Czech Republic where, for example, the ODS not only defended but sometimes even strengthened their positions. So people really take the local elections as a local issue. They look at what representatives of a certain party did for the community or the city and they voted according to these results. I would not say that the national government and their reforms and politics would have a major impact on the local election results of the municipalities.”
