| The Czech Republic is looking for a replacement for President Havel The new president of the Czech Republic may be elected today, or perhaps only in September. But in any case, Vaclav Havel will leave the presidential office on February 2. In the morning, in the Spanish Hall of Prague Castle, senators, as well as deputies of the lower house of parliament, begin to discuss possible candidates. No political scientist undertakes to predict the results.
The Czech Republic is a parliamentary republic in which everything is decided by the government and the legislature, and the president is rather a symbol of the nation. And it is very difficult to find a replacement for Vaclav Havel, who is leaving the post of head of state. The applicant must receive 101 votes out of 200 in the lower house of parliament and 41 votes out of 81 in the Senate. If the winner is not determined in the first round, a general vote of both chambers is held. Between rounds there is a break of up to two weeks. The parliament itself will determine the timing. If a leader is not identified in the second round, then parliament will have to amend the constitution and allow direct popular elections of the head of state. According to public opinion polls, 85% of the population is in favor of this. But such elections can only be held in September. With this outcome, for the period from February 2 to September, presidential duties will be performed by the prime minister and the speaker of the upper house of parliament.
The candidate of the Civic Democratic Party, former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, has a better chance in the lower house of parliament. Christian Democratic Union and People's Party candidate Peter Piethart has a chance to emerge as leader in the Senate. Because of the support that Pithart has in the Senate, it is impossible to predict the outcome of the vote. The ruling Social Democrats, which do not have such a position in the upper house of parliament, could support Klaus in exchange for some political concessions in the future. These two largest parties in the country have already concluded agreements in the past to divide spheres of influence: one gets control of parliament, the other gets the prime minister's chair. But there are also communists, who hold 18% of the votes in the legislature. For them, Pithart is a more compromise figure than the right-wing Klaus.
In fact, there was a compromise figure until recently. Otokar Moteil, the Czech Ombudsman, former Minister of Justice, Chairman of the Supreme Court, and lawyer for many dissidents during the communist era, took part in the presidential race. But pre-election scandals forced him to withdraw his candidacy. It turned out that about two decades ago, Moteil crushed a pedestrian to death and was convicted for it. Moteil was criticized by Jaroslav Bures, a candidate from the ruling Social Democratic party. It soon became clear that Buresh had also killed a pedestrian about two decades ago. In addition, Buresh said that in communist times he defended a dissident singer. However, the man turned out to be not a dissident at all, but a representative of the communist nomenklatura.
The question of who did what during communist times still plays a role in the Czech Republic. The newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes published a poll on the eve of the vote, from which it follows that none of the candidates meets the standards set by Vaclav Havel, but the closest to them is Vaclav Klaus, who was not a communist.
Human rights activist Havel was first elected president in 1989 for six months to lead the country to free elections. This was the culmination of the Velvet Revolution. The elections were held, and the new parliament elected Havel as president for a term of two years. At the end of this period, Czechoslovakia decided to split into two states, and Havel resigned as president, declaring that he did not want to lead the process of disintegration of the country. But the new, already Czech, parliament elected him twice for a five-year term. So, in total, Havel has been in power for 13 years. So the history of the presidency is the history of the formation of the country to which Havel really gave his heart. Irina LAGUNINA, Prague |
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