Czech politics

The Czech Republic had scheduled general elections for early November but the political deal that had been cut to make that happen disappeared when the Social Democrats suddenly withdrew their support for the early election.

Jiri Paroubek, the Social Democratic party leader, said that he now prefers to hold the general elections as previously scheduled in June of 2010.

In order to have a snap election, the lower house of parliament would have had to dissolve itself and the support of the Social Democrats was crucial. When Paroubek withdrew the support, the snap poll in November essentially went out the window. Paroubek justified his actions by saying that the courts would have rejected the plan to dissolve parliament.

"We're looking for a way to end the parliamentary term, but this has to be a way that anticipates the decision of the Constitutional Court. Our analysts have said the Constitutional Court will in all probability reject early elections in November. So either we have to look for a different solution, or we have to be content with the regular election term – i.e. elections at the end of May 2010,” said Paroubek.

Denunciations of the sudden about face were immediate and scathing. Former Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek pulled no punches.

"Today's decision by Jiri Paroubek and the Social Democrats means nothing but a deepening of the crisis and further destabilization of the Czech political scene...A politician who turns around 180 degrees from one evening to the next and breaks all agreements cannot be trusted by anyone,” Topolanek said.

Now that the elections scheduled for November have been cancelled, interim prime minister Jan Fischer, who took over after Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's center-right cabinet collapsed in March, says that if the political parties want his caretaker cabinet to stay, they should give him a mandate.

He also said that parliament would have to adopt his cabinet's draft budget which calls tax hikes and spending cuts to keep the budget gap to within five percent of the gross domestic product.

Currently Fischer's government expects the 2010 budget gap to reach nearly seven and a half percent of gross domestic product.

Still, at the end of the day, no one is happy with the proceedings. Certainly not the Czech voters.

As for the rest of Europe, even Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt noted that that the EU was having a tough time keeping up with the byzantine ways of Czech politics. Jan Kohout his Czech counterpart, conceded that the inner workings of Czech politics could at times be a bit difficult to understand.

av/dpa/Reuters/AP
Editor: Trinity Hartman