Lessons from the Czech Senate Elections

The Czech Republic’s Senate election, in which voters selected twenty seven Senators (one third of the Senate), offers several important lessons. The overwhelming victory of the so-called Quad-coalition, whose candidates won 17 Senate seats, over the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) of Vaclav Klaus (8 seats) suggests that voters opted for personalities with lose party affiliations rather than for the disciplined party members offered by the ODS.

The Senate election again showed that the ODS has a very firm core of supporters, which makes it possible for the party to draw the support of some 25 percent of the Czech electorate. This is useful in those types of elections where parties are ranked according to the achieved percentages of the popular vote. In a two-round majority system, which is used for electing the Senators, however, candidates, must ultimately win more than 50 percent of the vote to be elected. The ODS obviously does not do well under such conditions. Not only has the party had a very low coalition potential since 1997, when the Klaus-led coalition fell apart amid a party financing scandal within the ODS, but Klaus has opted for a rather unfortunate strategy of fighting against all other parties.

At its congress before the Senate elections, Klaus had criticized the Quad-coalition, the Social Democrats (CSSD), the Communists, and the so-called Castle block of President Havel’s allies. His “opposed-to-all” strategy badly backfired; the ODS candidates, with only few exceptions, had no allies in the second round of the Senate elections. The ODS and Klaus are in a unfortunate situation: They enjoy the strong support of approximately 25 percent of the electorate but are equally strongly disliked by the remaining 75 percent of the electorate.

The CSSD has apparently paid a price for a string of recent scandals that rocked the party and for the behavior of its leader, Prime Minister Milos Zeman. Recent opinion polls have indicated that the popularity of the party, whose government has been successful in improving the economic situation and accelerating the process of the Czech Republic’s accession to the European Union, has been on the rise. However, scandals involving some advisers of the prime minister, some of whom were high-ranking Communist party members under the communist rule, and Zeman’s increasingly bad relations with the media have apparently contributed to the poor showing of the CSSD candidates in both the Senate and regional elections.

The CSSD and its government are now faced with difficult dilemmas. First, it is clear that Zeman has become a burden for his party, but it is not clear how quickly and effectively he can be replaced. Second, the CSSD government has lost almost all of its legitimacy in light of the election results in both the regional and Senate elections. Its minority status has become even more “minor”.” The ODS, that has kept the Zeman government in power under the so called opposition agreement, will need to think hard whether the arrangement can be maintained.

In general, the fate of the opposition agreement will most likely depend on the fate of the new electoral law, that was jointly passed in the Lower House and in the Senate by the ODS and the CSSD, but is now awaiting the decision of the Constitutional Court. Should the court agree with President Havel, who argues that the law is unconstitutional, Klaus will have almost no reason to keep the CSSD in power until 2002, when the regular general elections should be held. It is partly so also because the results of the Senate election all but destroyed the hopes of the ODS and the CSSD that a package of constitutional amendments passed by the two parties in the Lower House could be approved by the Senate. In the election, the two parties were not able to win back the constitutional majority they once held. In fact, they lost even a simple majority to their opponents. The hope for electoral law changes and constitutional amendments limiting the powers of the President and the Central Bank were one of the main reasons why Klaus signed the opposition agreement with the CSSD.

The Senate election also has also quashed, at least temporarily, Klaus’s presidential ambitions. As the president of the country is elected separately by the both houses of the Parliament, the loss of the majority in the Senate means that Klaus has lost almost any hope of becoming the country’s next president, should Havel not finish his current term.

The Quad-coalition has emerged from the Senate election as a stronger subject. Following the relative success in the regional elections and the clear victory in the Senate elections, the Quad-coalition has finally registered in the mind of most voters as a viable formation. Leaders of the individual parties that form the Quad-coalition now quickly have to find a joint leader, to seal their cooperation in the eyes of the public. The results of the Senate elections point to either former Foreign Minister Josef Zieleniec or Helena Rögnerova, who soundly defeated Senate Chairman Libuse Benesova of the ODS, as candidates for the Quad-coalition’s top post. However, appointing a person who is not a leader of one the four coalition parties may be a difficult task and may yet cause serious friction within the Quad-coalition.

Transitions - 20. 11. 2000