Czech Republic - 2021 Parliamentary Election
The 8-9 October 2021 parliamentary election would see the traditional struggle of left versus right replaced by the now familiar face-off between mainstream and populist parties. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis hoped a successful COVID vaccination drive would help persuade the country to hand him another four years in office when it goes to the polls. The billionaire’s erratic handling of the coronavirus pandemic had seen his Ano party lose a lead that had previously appeared insurmountable.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Czech Republic began its search for a different system of governance. In 1992 they adopted parliamentary democracy in a similar style that existed in the Inter-war period. In the style of the French system, the President holds a significant amount of power over new legislation and running the country. The Chamber of Deputies (the lower house) holds more power than the Senate in terms of scrutinizing the government and the creation of new legislation. The Chamber of Deputies may also vote to overrule any veto decision made by the Senate. For this, they need a simple majority – 101 seats.
Elections to the Parliament of the Czech Republic are held by secret ballot, based on a universal, equal, and direct right to vote. The Chamber of Delegates of the Czech Republic are elected on the principle the d’Hont Highest Averages method of proportional representation. The Chamber of Delegates shall consist of two hundred Delegates who shall be elected for a four-year term. Each and every voter who has reached twenty-one years of age no later than on the second day of the election may be elected a Delegate in the Chamber of Delegates provided the voter is not prohibited from exercising his/her right to vote at the time of the elections, on the election days.
For the purpose of elections to the Chamber of Delegates, the territory of the Czech Republic is divided into constituencies - electoral regions in which the elections shall be held on the principle of proportional representation. Boundaries of electoral regions, are drawn up in line with boundaries of geo-political divisions of the Czech Republic - regions, as recognized on the day of the call of the elections. The metropolitan region of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, shall be a separate electoral region.
The Central Election Board shall review the reports of regional election boards, and according to the data reported, shall sum up all valid votes cast within all electoral regions for all party/coalition lists of candidates. Such total popular vote shall be divided by the prescribed number of Delegates in the Chamber of Delegates. The figure obtained in the above manner, rounded off to the nearest whole number, shall define [the average proportion of the population in the Czech Republic to be represented by one legislative seat -] the national electoral quota. The total vote in the electoral region shall then be divided by the national electoral quota, and as many legislative seats shall be allocated to the electoral region as many times the full national electoral quota is contained in the region's total vote count. The same procedure shall be repeated until legislative seats have been allocated for all electoral regions.
If after the above procedure, several seats in the Chamber of Delegates remain to be apportioned, the seats that were not allocated by full national electoral quotas shall subsequently be allocated to electoral regions with the largest remainder of votes after the quota has been subtracted from each region's total vote for each seat it was allocated. The legislative seats shall be allocated sequentially to the electoral regions with the largest remainder until all the seats in the Chamber of Delegates have been apportioned among electoral regions. Should there be several electoral regions with equally highest remainder, lots shall be drawn to determine the winning region.
Previously the competition pitted center-right against center-left, but now the left has practically disappeared. Babis’s populism had proved so attractive that his Ano party had absorbed the support of its left-wing coalition partners, and both the Social Democrats (CSSD) and Communist Party (KSCM) were at risk of their support dropping below the 5 percent threshold for entering parliament.
After the catastrophic management of the Covid-19 pandemic, which led the Czech Republic to have one of the highest mortality rates in Europe, cracks started to appear in the Babis political machinery, which had dominated Czech politics for the past seven years. The Czech Pirate Party, the most popular opposition party according to recent polls, will run alongside the Mayors and Independents (STAN) in the October 2021 election.
The leaders of Czech right and center-right parties came out celebrating the regional election of October 2020. This sparked rumours of an possible alliance led by the right-wing ODS (Civic Democracy Party), with the support of the TOP09 liberals and the Christian Democrats of KDU-CSL. At the beginning of December, all three parties announced they would enter the race under the name Spolu (Together). But ODS was heavily handicapped by its long history at the head of the government (1992-1998, 2006-2013), as was TOP09 (in power with ODS in 2010-2013) and KDU-CSL (in power with ODS in 2006-2009). And many controversial ODS figures openly admired the likes of Orban, Kaczynski and Trump which served as a deterrent for moderate voters.
On April 13, 2021 Czech Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek (Social Democrats) was recalled from his post by the interior minister and Social Democrat chair Jan Hamacek after his failed bid for the chairmanship of the Social Democrats at its national congress. According to Hamacek, Petricek has been dismissed from his post because the party needs to be more “understandable” to voters in the general elections this autumn. Hamacek said Petricek presented a completely different concept and attitude to the government during the party congress, far from the Social Democrats' focus on building its voter base within the ranks of more conservative left-wing voters, a strategy represented by Hamacek, who was re-elected chair.
Hamacek refused claims that Petricek has been recalled due to pressure from the Prime Minister Andrej Babis or pro-Russian President Milos Zeman, who said in March that Petricek should be removed due to his stance on the expansion of the Dukovany nuclear power plant.
Petricek had called for the party to reject future co-operation with the populist billionaire premier's Ano party and to try to reach out to younger, more liberal voters. He had also pushed for Russia to be excluded from the Dukovany tender, and for the Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 to be shunned (at least until it gets EU-wide approval), both partly on foreign policy grounds.
Prime Minister Andrej Babis' centrist party on 09 October 2021 narrowly lost the Czech Republic's parliamentary election, a surprise development that could mean the end of the populist billionaire's reign in power. The two-day election to fill 200 seats in the lower house of the Czech Republic’s parliament took place shortly after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported details of Babis’ overseas financial dealings in a project dubbed the “Pandora Papers.” Babis, 67, denied wrongdoing.
With almost all the the votes counted, the Czech Statistics Office said Together, a liberal-conservative three-party coalition, captured 27.8% of the vote, beating Babis' ANO (Yes) party, which won 27.1%. In another blow to the populists, another center-left liberal coalition of the Pirate Party and STAN, a group of mayors, received 15.6% of the vote to finish third, the statistics office reported.
“The two democratic coalitions have gained a majority and have a chance to form a majority government,” said Petr Fiala, Together's leader and its candidate for prime minister. Five opposition parties with policies closer to the European Union’s mainstream compared with the populist Babis put aside their differences in this election to create the two coalitions, seeking to oust the euroskeptic prime minister from power.
The result meant “an absolute change of the politics in the Czech Republic,” analyst Michal Klima told Czech public television. “It stabilizes the country’s position in the West camp.”
On 28 November 2021 leader of the incoming coalition government Petr Fiala was named the Czech Republic’s new prime minister in an unusual ceremony, with COVID-stricken President Milos Zeman speaking from behind a plastic barrier. Fiala faced the urgent task of grappling with one of the world’s highest COVID infection rates, including a case of the new Omicron variant. Fiala teamed his Civic Democratic Party up with two smaller parties to form the Together alliance which came first in the general election. Ranging from the mildly eurosceptic Civic Democrats to the centre-left liberal Pirate Party – they have pledged to cut budget deficits, which have spiralled since last year amid the pandemic and rises in pensions and wages.
The grouping, which includes the centrist Christian Democrats and the center-right TOP 09 parties, narrowly beat the ANO movement of outgoing populist billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis. The alliance has since forged a coalition with two centrist parties – the Mayors and Independents, and the Pirate Party – to secure a majority of 108 votes in the 200-seat parliament. The five parties agreed on the composition of the future government and on a policy statement.
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