Czech Elections, the Mindset Evolution

First the earthquake: Together, the country’s two biggest parties, the Social Democrats (CSSD) and Civic Democrats (ODS), lost 1.5 million votes from the last elections in 2006, even though they came out on top (CSSD with 22.1 percent and ODS with 20.2 percent).

Two parties, TOP 09 and Veci Verejne/Public Affairs (VV), picked up most of those votes, vaulting into double digits in their first attempt to get into parliament (16.7 percent and 10.9 percent, respectively). The Communists, at 11.3 percent, were the only other party to pass the 5 percent threshold, leaving the Greens and the Christian Democrats, a long-time fixture on the political scene, out in the cold. 

For the first time since 1989, ODS lost in Prague to TOP 09. And the traditionally male-dominated political scene will now have 44 female parliamentarians, a record number.

Four party leaders resigned, including CSSD’s Jiri Paroubek, who actually won the elections, but garnered a much lower percentage than opinion polls had predicted. The results left Paroubek with little chance of forming a coalition or even a minority government with Communist support, another scenario he had entertained.

Out with the arrogance and antagonism

It was truly Paroubek’s departure that many cheered in the days following the election. With his blunt, combative style, Paroubek reminded many of the wily, opportunistic, not-too-smart bureaucrats of the communist era and became something of a rallying cry for young people fed up with the arrogance of power.

If Paroubek really does disappear from the scene, CSSD might have one of its best chances in years to modernize into a party of the left that appeals to young, progressive voters instead of relying on older voters not too dissimilar from those who continue to vote for the Communist Party. In all likelihood, many young CSSD politicians were secretly celebrating their party’s disappointing results, knowing Paroubek would probably resign and they might finally get an opportunity to assert themselves.

The Social Democratic leader has also been a prime contributor to the low level of political culture in the Czech Republic, defined by the animosity between Paroubek and Mirek Topolanek, the former long-time ODS chairman, who resigned in April after controversial comments about gays and Jews.   

With that pair at the helm, the country's two biggest parties were always bickering and virtually never worked together in the name of reform. The pinnacle of their conflict occurred in March 2009, when Paroubek called a vote of non-confidence and brought down Topolanek's government in the midst of the Czech Republic's presidency of the EU, taking narrow party and political interests to the extreme and embarrassing many of his countrymen.

That kind of antagonism now has the potential to change. The best bet at this point is a right-center coalition (ODS, TOP 09, and VV) and two of the party leaders - ODS’ Petr Necas and TOP 09’s Karel Schwarzenberg - are known as conciliatory figures not given to personal attacks.

The wild card is VV and its leader, Radek John, a former investigative journalist new to politics but not to the tabloids (a messy departure from the country's most popular private television station and a very public affair).

A chance for majority stability?

Another major point of optimism is the chance for a stable majority, since the three parties would have 118 seats out of 200, a far cry from the case in 2006, when the elections ended in a dead heat between the two main left- and right-wing camps. The shaky government that emerged then - many months later, and only after a series of false starts and a short-lived minority government - had to depend on two rebels from the Social Democrats to pass any major legislation. 

Not everyone, however, is overflowing with optimism. Despite the media’s general assumption that VV will automatically align itself with the right and form a coalition, Jiri Pehe, a prominent political analyst, says that might not be the case.

“Our journalists are not only ideologues in many cases, but are also lazy,” says Pehe. “If they bothered to read the program of VV they would see that it takes a lot of imagination to describe this group as a regular right-of-center party.”

That point is also made by Victor Gomez, an expert in Central European politics at the University of Toronto. “The party appears to be more of a populist movement with an anti-corruption platform and close financial ties to a security company run by one of its leading members,” he says. “Moreover, the fact that critical decisions by VV must be approved by internal party referendums may be a source of potential instability for the government.”

Pehe says that it would be an overstatement to even call this a victory of the right and conclude that the majority of voters responsibly chose parties intent on budget cuts and painful reforms (instead of the unrealistic promises of CSSD). As he has pointed out, ODS and TOP 09 acquired together 36 percent of the vote, while the left-wing parties received only slightly less, 34 percent, or close to 39 percent, if one also counts the party of Milos Zeman, a former CSSD head, which narrowly missed getting into parliament.

In addition, despite the apparent novelty of two new parties achieving such an impressive result - virtually overnight - some analysts remember that the phenomenon is not all that unique in post-1989 Czech politics, with unimpressive long-term results.

“Czech politics has been marked since the 1990s by the continual surfacing of new parties with centrist, center-right, or rightist programs,” says Gomez. “All of these new parties ultimately failed to become a lasting presence in the Czech Parliament. 

“This is the space now occupied by TOP 09 and VV, although the program of the latter party suggests a bigger dose of populism. Both recent history and the actual characteristics of these two new parties suggest that they will have difficulty being successful where previous such parties have not been.”

Voter disgust

Clearly, the situation will be all the more challenging given the parties’ pledges of austerity measures and fiscal responsibility in order to reduce the deficit, and the possible backlash of those hardest hit during the economic crisis.

To succeed beyond one election cycle and implement long-lasting reforms, the ruling parties would be well-advised to respect one of the obvious lessons of the elections: that the polarization of the past has disgusted voters and that consensus, even with the opposition, should be the mantra of the coming years.

The new government will need to portray the bold moves needed as part of a wider project to keep the country healthy and competitive, though that kind of high-minded, cross-party approach has been particularly lacking in the region for years.

“We are witness to the biggest change in mindset and the political scene since 1989,” says Martin Ehl, the foreign editor of the daily Hospodarske noviny, in reference not only to recent events in the Czech Republic, but more broadly at Central Europe’s year of elections. “It is not a revolutionary one, but a more evolutionary, step-by-step development. And one of the common features is a lack of a ‘grand vision’ - what else to do after EU membership.”