"I have never thought we could decline so deeply as actually to equal the Italians in politics", a normally politically-correct friend of mine remarked after watching the prime minister's angry outburst on the evening of Saturday 3 June 2006, a few hours after the parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic officially ended.
My friend was referring to the fact that Jiří Paroubek, the Česká strana sociálně demokratická (Czech Social Democratic Party [CSSD]) prime minister, echoed Silvio Berlusconi's refusal in his first post-election address to accept his party's defeat, let alone to congratulate the winner, Mirek Topolánek of the rightwing opposition, the Občanská demokratická strana (Civic Democratic Party [ODS]).
This was despite the fact that the ODS won 35.38% of all votes, a success unprecedented in the recent history of a country where proportional representation militates against any single party winning a large proportion of seats in parliament. However, Paroubek's CSSD also did remarkably well – its 32.32% of votes represents the party's best electoral achievement.
In short, the results suggest that a dramatic polarisation of Czech society between the two major parties may be occurring, following the fiercest-ever election campaign. The fact that the two biggest parties won almost 70% of all votes may indicate a gradual shift towards a two-party system. This increased bipolarity was achieved to the detriment of smaller parties, especially the Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy (Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia [KSCM]. Indeed, the fact that the communists lost more than a third of their parliamentary seats (on 12.81% of the vote) is one of the few unambiguously positive outcomes of the elections.
Alongside this trend, the key outcomes are two. First, the Social Democrats were defeated at the national level for the first time in ten years. Second, neither of the two largest parties is able to form a majority coalition, since the right-left struggle resulted in a perfect tie. The ODS and its two preferred centrist partners together hold 100 seats in the 200-member parliament, the same number as the leftist bloc of the CSSD and the communists. This result represents a bitter disappointment for the ODS, which dominated all the opinion polls and took it for granted that it would oust the Social Democrats from government office after spending eight hungry years in opposition.
Jan Jire teaches international relations and security studies at Charles University in Prague. He also works as a senior consultant at a Prague public-affairs agency.
Also in openDemocracy on elections and politics in modern central Europe:
Neal Ascherson, "Poland's interregnum" (30 September 2005)
Alexander Motyl, "Ukraine's new political complexion"
(24 March 2006)
Margot Letain, "The 'denim revolution': a glass half full"
(11 April 2006)
Gabriel Partos, "Hungary: change via continuity"
(8 May 2006)
The secret of success
What is the background of the Czech Social Democratic Party, which has ruled the country since 1998?
In contrast to most other central-European countries, the CSSD was not born out of the liberal wing of the Communist Party. It is rather an incoherent amalgam of the authentic pre-war Social Democrats with former reformists expelled from the communists after the Soviet Union's invasion of what was then Czechoslovakia in 1968.
For this reason, the revived party became an extremely fragile organism consisting of at least three groups: 1968 utopians still revering the idea of "socialism with a human face"; returned émigrés who had cherished their fierce anti-communism in exile; and unscrupulous mid-ranking communist apparatchiks who had served both the Soviet occupiers and their own pockets in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the early 1990s, strong anti-communism prevailed, the party being then dominated by the returned, morally unquestionable, émigrés. However, these émigrés very soon started losing their positions within the party, to be gradually replaced by former communists. The party targeted primarily the "protest voters" shocked by the liberal economic reforms then promoted by the ODS. Consequently, the party gradually discarded its original anti-communism.
As soon as they came to power in 1998, the Social Democrats miraculously turned into a "big-business party" as did many of their sister parties in Europe, notably the German and Hungarian. The CSSD's favouritism towards big business was manifested in "special relationships" with dubious homegrown tycoons as well as in the party's unmitigated idolatry of "foreign investors", generously fed with excessive "investment incentives", tax holidays and land that was often taken from private owners following intimidation in the name of progress. After eight years in power, it became clear that corruption and cronyism had grown throughout the CSSD and that many of its leaders, ministers and MPs found themselves very close to a real underworld.
At the same time, the Czech economy boomed and wages grew under the party's tutelage. These have been times of unprecedented economic prosperity. What, therefore, led many Czechs to vote for the opposition?
First, the ODS succeeded in turning the election campaign into a Manichean choice between the socialist-communist bloc and the centre-right, freedom-loving bloc. No matter how pathetic it may sound, Paroubek really did all he could to help the communists shed the shackles of their sixteen-year political isolation. In the past couple of months, the Social Democrats cooperated openly with the communists in parliament, passing leftist legislation to the dismay of the CSSD's helpless junior coalition partners. Soon after the elections, Paroubek started speaking of himself as a leader of the 100-seat-strong "left", without distinguishing between his own party and the Mephisto on his left hand, thus confirming the pre-election allegations.
Second, many voters in the Czech Republic made it clear that they did not consider the economy, no matter how booming it was, as the sole motivation for supporting or rejecting a political party. They had other concerns: the CSSD's preference for big business to the detriment of small and medium enterprises, its leftist excesses (like the proposed expropriations of small private property on behalf of large foreign investors), and, above all, the number of corruption scandals involving the highest echelons of the party establishment (and the subsequent efforts of the party's interior minister to sweep them under the carpet). These factors reinforced distrust of the fetish of "GDP growth" (to which the ODS is equally wedded) and to switch their support accordingly.
Many Czechs who, eventually and reluctantly, supported the ODS – over which the shadow of corruption scandals from the 1990s also lies, and whose leaders were unable to explain credibly the putative benefits of their radical economic proposals – probably sighed in relief on 3 June when watching a red-faced Paroubek vituperatively and at length condemning the subversive "rightist conspiracy" forged by ODS with the help of lackey journalists bought by the party. Those who remember the communist-era ideologues using exactly the same vocabulary based on defamation and intimidation shivered: not because they were afraid those communist times could return, but rather because of Paroubek's complete lack of taste and decency.
The German precedent
What political alternatives are now on offer? Not many. A libertarian could rejoice at the possibility that there may be no government at all. The rest of us, albeit not expecting much from any government regarding the ups and downs of our private lives, still perceive a functioning government as a prerequisite for a stable society and economy. With the exception of the CSSD, all parliamentary parties including the newcomer Greens (who won 6.29% of the vote) refuse any, even informal, cooperation with the communists, which greatly reduces the variety of potential coalitions.
Beyond the aforementioned Italian example, the Czechs' post-election situation resembles the experience of another European partner: Angela Merkel's government in neighbouring Germany. In Germany, too, the rightwing opposition hoped for a staggering victory in September 2005, dashed by a stalemated result that led after two months to the formation of a "grand coalition". German Social Democrats, too, were led by an egotistic and arrogant man (albeit much better dressed than Paroubek) who was initially determined to stay in power despite his party's defeat. Moreover, a grand coalition in the Czech Republic would probably not be interpreted by voters as an outrageous betrayal, because both the ODS and the CSSD can credibly claim that there is hardly any other option.
Nevertheless, two other options are being discussed: a caretaker government followed by early elections, and a radical reform of the electoral system aimed at eliminating small parties from parliament. However, to change an electoral system is to play with fire since any change can always turn against its original promoters. Moreover, the CSSD and the ODS each still hope to succeed in luring one or two defectors from the rival camp, thereby achieving a narrow majority in parliament.
In any case, it is quite clear that the Civic Democrats' proposals for radical economic and social reforms will not be realised; and, much more sadly, that the corruption allegations revolving around CSSD leaders will not be investigated properly any time soon.
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