When Winning Isn't Winning: Negotiating The Result Of The Czech Elections JANA PANEK

First let's have the good news: The Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) has gained its highest vote since the re-establishment of the party in 1989. Up from 26% in 1996, and 7% before that in 1992, the CSSD took 32% of the vote in the elections on 20 June to become the top party in the Czech Republic. Take a moment now to smile and celebrate that. That is the end of the good news.

After the elections, the Czech Republic is left with a winning Social Democratic Party that nevertheless did not win a majority and cannot, alas, form a government. So it has to seek a coalition government with the same two centre-right parties which were part of the last coalition government, headed by Vaclav Klaus' right-wing ODS (Civic Democrats). That government ended in December of 1997 after a scandal over the financing of the ODS, leaving the country in the hands of a shapeless caretaker government formed by minor parties until the elections.

The Czech Social Democratic Party is actually one of the oldest in Europe, founded in 1878. The party was forcibly merged with the Communists in 1948, which resulted in the party's leaders forming a party in exile until the 'Velvet Revolution' of 1989. After the division of Czechoslovakia into two nations (Czechia and Slovakia), the CSSD, under the leadership of Milos Zeman, came into its own, and in 1996 formed the the official opposition to the Klaus government. Despite being a democratic socialist party, the party has had to endure the usual anti-socialist sentiment which is found in post-communist Eastern Europe. At one point the Klaus government attempted to expropriate the party's headquarters in Prague, a building that has been the historical home of the party for generations. Through all of this, the party has remained strong, and the election result of 20 June proves that the CSSD has finally built a new democratic left in Czechia.

Yet even though the party has steadily increased its support, the fruits of its effort have been denied it, because aside from the former communists (the KSCM, who are not the 'reformed' type, and considered as political untouchables - their deputy chairman not only defends the Soviet past, but insists that his party could really do what it wanted to do before, now that they, and not the Russians, are calling the shots), all other parties in Czechia are enthusiatic free-marketeers or right wing populists. The CSSD has been cautious about the pace of economic reform, preferring to emphasise the importance of maintaining the social safety net, and the necessity of building a stable welfare state while still pursuing modernisation and economic prosperity. Zeman has been a tough opposition leader, and a strong campaigner for education and honesty in government, seeking to slow down privatisation and devote more attention to the people of his nation rather than simply the bankers and businessmen. Where the other parties tend towards various degrees of Euroskepticism, the Social Democrats have been eager to move ahead with the integration of the Czech Republic into the European Union.

What this means is that in the attempt to create a stable coalition government, Zeman is dealing with political enemies all round, of both him and his party. One of the parties considered as a possible coalition partner is actually a recent split from the ODS. Freedom Union (US) helped to bring down the Klaus government during the corruption scandal, but its leader Jan Ruml has also made clear his unwillingness to cooperate with the CSSD. Ruml has even suggested that despite the deep personal animosity between himself and Klaus, the animosity between himself and Zeman is greater, and he would consider returning to a coalition with the ODS rather than working with the CSSD. The other possible coalition party is the Christian Democrats (KDS-CSL), whose leader Josef Lux has been cold to the idea of governing with the Social Democrats.

Any government that Zeman forms is unlikely to be a stable one, due to the sharp differences between the parties. Neither party of course shares any programmatic ground with the CSSD, and that makes governing with any clear sense of direction nearly impossible. The fact of the matter is that this victory for the CSSD is a Pyrrhic one, in that it could well result in new elections altogether. If that were to be the case, the minor parties that are now preventing the formation of a government could in the end damage themselves far more than they do either the CSSD or the ODS.

There has been talk of a temporary government between the most unlikely partners of all, the CSSD and the ODS, for the purpose of changing the Czech constitution in order to raise the threshhold of party representation in parliament to 10%. The idea has been discussed in political circles for some time now, despite the fact that it would require an agreement between the nation's two most bitter political opponents. Were there a 10% threshhold in this past election, neither Freedom Union (8.6%) nor the Christian Democrats (9%) would have gained seats in parliament, and thus would not have been a factor in forming any government. In a nation concerned with presenting a picture of political stability to the world around them, particularly the rest of Europe, raising the threshhold of parliamentary representation to prevent situations like the one we have now might well be the price that Czechs are willing to pay to ensure a well-defined government, with a well-defined majority party and opposition.

And Europe is watching Czechia closely. The issue how and when to bring the Czechs into Europe is dependent upon the country's ability to handle political transitions (it has never handled them well in its short history of true independence), as well as the development of the nation's economy (Czechia is the only country in Eastern Europe with a negative growth rate). Those in favour of raising the threshhold argue that it will create an electoral system that is essentially not any worse than the French system, and will bring stability. The argument against a 10% threshhold is that it could well result in six minor parties receiving 59.1% of the vote between them, and having no representation in parliament. So while reducing the number of parties that may take a place in parliament may seem a way to create efficiency on the surface, it is also a dangerous formula for backlash outside of the parliament when other people's voices are not being heard. With the voices of the extreme right being raised in Czechia as in everywhere else in Europe, it is important that no larger sector of society be left to feel disenfranchised.

Yet today the Czech Republic is a nation without a government, and no hope of a stable one anytime soon. It may well be that new elections are the only way for the country to find an answer, but such a course is unlikely to favour the Social Democrats. The right is larger at the moment than the left, and while it is certain that some of those who voted for the old-style communist KSCM would vote for the CSSD if forced to choose between Zeman and Klaus, the right could still expect to have at least ten percentage points over the left, leaving the Social Democrats back in opposition.

Whatever may happen in the coming days and weeks, the one thing that can be said is that the potential of the Czech Social Democratic Party is now quite promising. For Czech socialists who want to build upon that potential, the task is to make arguments to the voters for a government that does not simply hand the nation over to the market. Other issues, such as handing the nation over to the Americans through advocating NATO, are more complex and will also have to be debated and re-debated over time. The party may not now be able to form the kind of government it would like, but if the momentum of successful socialists in other European countries continues, it will certainly bode well for the party's future. In the interim, Czechia will have to be content, it seems, with the same kind of political negotiations and difficulties that have plagued other modern nations like Italy and Israel, whose parliamentary battles in forming coalition governments have become notorious. It is clear that Czechia has successfully learned the art of free elections. Now it must find an equally successful way to form a reliable government.

Jana Panek is a Czech now living in Britain. As we go to press, the Social Democrats have indeed negotiated an agreement with their arch rival, the ODS, to tolerate a minority government with Zeman as prime minister.