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Czech Republic - Politics - 1990s

At the 19th joint session of the two houses of the Federal Assembly, Alexandr Dubcek - who had led the ill-fated Prague Spring movement in the 1960's - was elected Speaker of the Federal Assembly. One day later, the parliament elected the Civic Forum's leader, Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia.

Despite their many shortcomings - not the least of which were political inexperience and serious time pressures - the new government and parliament were able to fill in many of the most gaping gaps in the Czechoslovak legal framework - concentrating in particular on the areas of human rights and freedoms, private ownership, and business law. They were also able to lay the framework for the first free elections to be held in Czechoslovakia in more than 40 years.

The results of the 1990 local and parliamentary elections in Czechoslovakia, which were likened at the time to a referendum which posed the question "Communism, yes or no?" showed a sweeping victory for the soon to be extinct Civic Forum (OF) in the Czech Republic, and for the Public Against Violence (VPN) in Slovakia. In other words, "Communism, no thanks."

The turnout for the local elections was more than 73 percent, and for Parliamentary elections more than 96 percent of the population went to the polls. Czech Petr Pithart of the Civic Forum was elected as Czech Premier, Slovaks Vladimir Meciar and Marian Calfa, both of the Public Against Violence (VPN), were elected Slovak and Federal Premier, respectively. Vaclav Havel was re-elected as the Czechoslovak President on July 5, 1990.

By the end of 1990, unofficial parliamentary "clubs" had evolved with distinct political agendas. Most influential was the Civic Democratic Party, headed by former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus. Other notable parties that came into being after the split were the Czech Social Democratic Party, Civic Movement, and Civic Democratic Alliance.

By 1992, Slovak calls for greater autonomy effectively blocked the daily functioning of the federal government. In the election of June 1992, Klaus's Civic Democratic Party won handily in the Czech lands on a platform of economic reform. Vladimir Meciar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia emerged as the leading party in Slovakia, basing its appeal on fairness to Slovak demands for autonomy. Federalists, like Havel, were unable to contain the trend toward the split. In July 1992, President Havel resigned. In the latter half of 1992, Klaus and Meciar hammered out an agreement that the two republics would go their separate ways by the end of the year. Members of the federal parliament, divided along national lines, barely cooperated enough to pass the law officially separating the two nations. The law was passed on December 27, 1992. On January 1, 1993, the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia were simultaneously and peacefully founded.

In December 1997 the coalition parties (ODS, KDU-CSL, ODA) were forced to resign due to collapse of coalition which was mainly caused by the long-term disagreements within the coalition, several scandals with financing the parties and also due to worsening of economic performance of the Czech Republic.

In January 1998 the new temporary government of Josef Tosovský was appointed. During the creation of a temporary semi-caretaker government ODS was not invited to take part in its formation and went into opposition. The President appointed the governor of the Czech National Bank, Josef Tosovsky, as Prime Minister. His minority cabinet obtained support from CSSD in exchange for calling special elections. The task was to prepare the country for the early elections. The Sofres-Factum agency has made public the results of its opinion poll. According to it, only 13.7 percent of the electorate would give their vote to the Civic democratic party, ODS. Compared to the period after parliamentary elections in 1996, that's a 16 percent drop. The Social democrats, according to poll respondents, would get 27.7 percent of the vote, the Communist party of Bohemia and Moravia would make it to parliament with 10.5 percent, and the ultra- right Republicans would also be successful, with 6.8 percent.

Czech voters returned a split verdict in the June 1998 parliamentary elections, giving the left-of-center Social Democrats (CSSD) a plurality but the right-of-center parties a majority. In the June 1998 early elections the Czech Social Democratic Party gained the majority of votes (32,3 %). After few weeks of negotiations among all the parties finally CSSD formed a minority government following a procedural agreement with the ODS (27,74). The results produced a CSSD minority government tolerated by the largest right-of-center party in parliament, former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus' Civic Democrats (ODS). Prime Minister Milos Zeman (CSSD) was the head of government. For the first time after the year 1989 a left oriented party rules in the Czech Republic. Milos Zeman (CSSD) became a new Prime Minister. Social Democrats were in power from July 1998 to June 2006.