Other shake-ups

This year’s election also saw other major surprises, among them the success of a ‘second’ protest party, Dawn, led by Czech-Japanese businessman turned senator Tomio Okamura. Dawn, with what many pundits regard as a strongly populist message, made it into the Chamber of Deputies with 7 percent of the vote. The election also saw the successful return to the lower house of the Christian Democrats led by Pavel Bělobrádek (6.8 percent), a long-established party that failed to make it into the Chamber of Deputies last time.