Social Democrats launch campaign to stop MPs defecting

The opposition Social Democrats have launched what they call a ‘battle’ to stop their deputies switching allegiance to other parties. Three Social Democrat MPs have defected to the ruling Civic Democratic Party since the elections. On Tuesday, the head of the Social Democrats, Jiří Paroubek, pledged that his party would not try and entice deputies from other political parties to defect, he asked the other parties in the Czech parliament to pledge the same thing. He said that enticing MPs to switch allegiance was ‘undemocratic’. It remains unlikely that the other parties in the Czech parliament will enter into the proposed pact.