Smaller parties agree to join forces in Prague's local elections

Six smaller centre-right political groupings signed an agreement on Thursday to join forces and fight against the three main parties - the ruling Social Democrats, the right-of-centre Civic Democratic Party and the Communists. The goal is to win over a majority of the electorate during the local elections in Prague in November 2006.

Tomas Homola und Edvard Outrata (right), photo: CTK

In what they have called "the Prague Challenge", the parties say they offer a pro-European programme that promises lower taxes, the protection of the environment, a better education system and a more effective fight against corruption. Independent Senator Edvard Outrata is from the Senators' Club for Open Democracy, which says this ambitious plan looks promising:

"The idea is to join the forces of the pro-European centre right, who are basically liberals. They agree with the Civic Democratic Party on many economic issues but on the other hand cannot accept the nationalist orientation, which borders on xenophobia. The idea now was to build a united party of these groupings in Prague with the Greens and possibly some other independent entities in order to mount a real challenge to the dreadful coalition between the nationalist right wing Civic Democratic Party and the Socialists."

This could work if they had four years to prepare but the elections are next year...

"Well, first of all, this particular action is really only in Prague, where there was a common approach already in the last elections and the parties are relatively well represented at Prague's City Hall. So, I think the work largely has been done. There are still 18 months to the municipal elections. The details of the programme may be negotiated again because this time the group also includes the greens but by and large, it's only a matter of having a single candidate for this group and not twenty of them."

Prague residents tend to be a little sceptical and we have seen many parties fall because of internal disagreement. If Prague voters hear of six parties, they think there is no way this could end well...

"It works in practice very well, because many of us in the Senate are elected for these entities and we all cooperate. We have created a caucus that was for a while the second biggest in the Senate and we have no problems establishing common approaches to things even without a party whip because we are all of similar opinions. Most of us here are independent but we are supported by each and every of these individual parties - there is one from the Path of Change, one from the ODA [Civic Democratic Alliance], there are several of us from the Freedom Union and another was also supported by the European Democrats, and so on."