Czech Republic - Smaller Political Parties
Civic Democratic Alliance - ODA
ODA Between 1992 and 1997 this was one of the parties of government. It failed to win the 5% of votes needed to enter parliament in June1998. Afterwards the party joined the right of centre oppostion grouping, the Four Coalition, but a row over the ODA's considerable debts led to the break up of the coalition at the end of 2001, leaving the party in the political wilderness.
Republicans of Miroslav Sladek
Republicans of Miroslav Sladek is a far right-wing party, appealing to nationalist sympathies. The party emerged from ashes of the Republican Party of Czechoslovakia, which failed to cross the 5% parliamentary threshold in the 1998 election. The new name of the party reflects an attempt at a political comeback by its controversial leader Miroslav Sladek. With its vehemently anti-Romany and anti-German rhetoric, the party can be described as extremist. The party is anti-NATO, anti-EU and strongly opposed to immigration.
Czech National Social Party - CSNS
This is one of the oldest parties, going back over a hundred years, but has failed to win mass support in the Czech Republic in recent years. It styles itself as a party of Czech national interests. The party's rhetoric is often at its strongest in criticizing illegal immigration, which it sees as one of the main sources of organized crime. The party has invested large sums of money into its election campaign, having recently sold its headquarters in central Prague.
The Party for Security in Life - SZJ
The party is the successor of the party "Pensioners for Security in Life", which gained just over 3% of the vote in the last parliamentary elections, when the party leader kept his promise to eat a beetle if the party failed to break the 5% barrier. The party aspires to represent the weaker in society: pensioners, unemployed people, disabled people, rural voters and women who feel disadvantaged. It has a socially based programme, based on a strong welfare state.
The Path for Change - Cesta zmeny
Hope - Nadeje
These two parties have common roots in the wave of public disillusionment with the current political elite that came at the end of the 1990s. However their founders quarreled and went their separate ways. Both are close to the centre of the political spectrum, pro-free market and strongly pro-European, and both accuse the two strongest political parties, the Social Democrats and the Civic Democrats of corruption and cynicism. The Path for Change is headed by the businessman Jiri Lobkowicz, and the driving force of Hope was one of the student leaders during the Velvet Revolution, Monika Pajerova.
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