Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas (Civic Democrat, ODS) has relaxed his earlier conditions for a center-right coalition to continue in office and instead called for a vote of confidence to be held in his government as the best test of its staying power and support in the lower house of parliament.
Nečas called for the confidence vote on Friday, backing off from his earlier demand for a breakaway faction from the smallest party in the outgoing coalition Public Affairs (VV) headed by deputy prime minister Karolína Peake to come up with at least 10 members of parliament as proof that center-right coalition can survive.
“This is the cleanest constitutional solution [of testing support],” Nečas told a news conference following a meeting of his party’s top decision making body, the executive committee. “Members of parliament will vote for or against the motion and it will be clear.”
Ten members of the 200-seat house is the minimum needed to form a parliamentary group in the lower house of parliament; the prime minister had threatened early elections to the lower house be called at the end of June if Peake could not meet that target. ‘This is the cleanest constitutional solution.’
Nečas added that sufficient support from the vote of confidence would pave the way for a new coalition agreement to be agreed between the ODS, TOP 09 and Peake’s platform on the basis of the current deal. He refused to say whether he would be satisfied with a bare 101 majority vote of confidence support. “There is no need to speculate now,” the ODS leader said dismissively.
Nečas last week set Peake the target of winning over nine other members of parliament by the end of Monday or face early elections halfway through the government’s normal four-year term after she made a surprise announcement quitting the trouble VV party on April 17. A handful of members of parliament immediately followed her with the numbers slowly climbing over the following days.
While sticking to his demand that a new coalition deal will not be signed by ODS and TOP 09 with individual VV defectors around Peake, a joint declaration of those members of parliament to support the coalition – rather than a parliamentary club – would for the moment be a sufficient working basis, Nečas said.
Peake announced Monday that her group would total eight with support from another former member of VV, Milan Šťovíček. Another VV member Miroslav Petráň declared his support for the coalition government but said he was staying put in the original VV club. Czech media reported that detached ODS member Michal Doktor would also support the group though not formally join it.
‘I feel there is a clear willingness to continue with the coalition project and it would be a great mistake to waste that desire.’
“A safe level of support for the government is secured,“ Peake wrote on her website. “I feel there is a clear willingness to continue with the coalition project and it would be a great mistake to waste that desire.”
If Peake could rally at least 10 members of parliament, together with the 92 from ODS and TOP 09, that would give the government a total of 102 seats. Support could also be counted on from former Prague mayor Pavel Bém, who resigned his ODS party membership after the release of tapes suggesting corrupt deals at Prague City Hall during his era in control.
Nečas also has the extra security that the rump of the VV party around de factor leader and former minister of transport Vít Bárta has said that it is willing to give constructive support for the outgoing coalition even if it is no longer a part of it.
VV chairman Radek John has declared he does not want early elections which would likely bring an election victory for the main opposition Social Democrats (ČSSD) with a government probably possible with tacit support from the communist party (KSČM).
John, Nečas and TOP 09 leader Karel Schwarzenberg on Sunday signed the effective death notice of the existing coalition, based on a united VV, with effect from April 27. The rump of VV have significantly declared they will vote for all the government decisions already taken, these include a series of budget and austerity measures which the party had earlier resisted.
The main opposition Social Democrats attacked Peake’s scrambling to rally members of parliament to her side. Parliamentary group leader Jeroným Tejc pointed out that Peake, like other VV candidates, signed an agreement with the VV party ahead of 2010 elections guaranteeing she would give up her seat if she quit the party and described her attempts to garner support as “a fraud on voters” in a news conference on Monday.
