Pundit on elections: It seems Babiš finally realises importance of Senate
Czechs go to the ballot boxes in a week’s time for municipal elections and elections to one-third of the seats in the Senate. How significant will the latter be for government leaders ANO? And what are the local polls likely to tell us about the positions of the major parties? I discussed those questions with political scientist Petr Just.
Let’s begin with the Senate elections. ANO currently have 12 of the 81 seats, while two opposition parties, the Civic Democrats and the Mayors, have more. How much are the Senate elections a priority for the party of PM Andrej Babiš?
“It seems that Andrej Babiš finally realises the importance of the Senate.
“Now he has the majority in the Chamber of Deputies, he considers the opposition majority in the Senate to be an obstacle for the policies that he wants to impose.
“This is why he is finally pushing for much more active approach from ANO towards the Senate elections – and is even personally engaging in campaigning for some ANO Senate candidates.
“So it’s now clear that the Senate has become much more important for him than it ever was before.”
Can you see ANO making inroads? Do you think they will improve on their current number of seats?
“They are not risking almost anything. They have just one seat that is up for election in this cycle, and that senator is actually not standing for re-election, so it’s an open seat.
“And given the overall strength of ANO, I’m pretty sure they will do better than winning just one seat.
“On the other hand, I don’t expect it will be like a massive wave of ANO support – ANO is also a party in the government, and usually ruling parties don’t do so well in Senate elections in Czechia.”
“However, as I said, since ANO is currently the strongest party in the Czech party system, I believe it’s quite realistic to predict that they will definitely increase their presence in the Senate.”
Also taking place will be municipal elections. A lot of local candidates run in those and voters have their own local concerns. But still, can they tell us something about the support of the major parties?
“What are called ‘second-order elections’, meaning elections that take place between elections to the Chamber of Deputies, are always considered a certain referendum on the performance of the government.
“So it’s obvious that these Senate and local elections will be interpreted by either the coalition or the opposition as a referendum on the government’s performance.”
About the opposition, there has been some debate recently about who the main opposition party is: the Civic Democrats have more seats in the upper house, but the Mayors have been coming ahead of them in some polls. Will next weekend’s elections make it any clearer who the strongest opposition party is?
“I believe both the Civic Democrats and the Mayors are taking these elections as a way to show that they are the strongest opposition party.
“As you said, the Civic Democrats have the strongest group in the Senate currently, and the Mayors are doing quite well in opinion polls.
“However, the Mayors have more seats up for re-election right now, so they are risking much more. They would have to work more actively in order to beat the Civic Democrats and secure the largest Senate group.
“That currently doesn’t seem so likely, but Senate elections are very hard to predict because of a lot of factors that can influence the results.
“For now it seems like the Mayors would have quite a hard time securing the position of strongest party in the Senate.
“But there is no doubt that the Mayors and the Civic Democrats are doing everything to show that they are the strongest one, the party that would be the challenger to today’s government.”
