Burson-Marsteller

The world champions getting ready for the election finals

by Michal Donath on 28th May 2010 • The Cast Blog

Unlike in the recent World Championship in ice-hockey, where the Czech “no star” team of outsiders beat after initial flops the best teams of the world including the unbeatable Russians, the fragmented Czech political team can still not decide who’s playing against whom as they are getting ready for the election finals this weekend. Unlike the Czech team on the ice, Czech political subjects behave like primadonnas focused only on their own reflections in the Czech political mirror. The picture offered to the voters is blurred and twisted, evoking very little confidence.

The 2010 Czech election campaign is as turbulent as the events leading up to it. The fall of the right-wing government during the Czech 2009 EU presidency, initiated by the leftist social democrats, brought international shame on the country. The interim caretaker government of civil servants was put in place originally until the preliminary elections set for October. Based on a constitutional complaint submitted by a few deputies concerning the lawfulness of the proposed premature dissolution of the lower chamber, the elections were postponed until the upcoming weekend.

The 2010 campaign was expected to be the usual skirmish between the two main rival parties: right-wing Civil Democratic Party (Topolanek-led ODS, who upon numerous scandals was replaced by Necas as the party lead) and the left-wing social democrats (Paroubek-led CSSD). Unexpectedly, the fatigue with past quarrels of the two leading parties became the “theme of the elections” and as such, has opened the way to several newcomers, such as Veci Verejne or TOP 09, led by Count Schwarzenberg (former Foreign Minister) who is the most credible politician according to the polls. Interesting is also the fact that the Greens and Christian Democrats seem not to be doing extremely well in the pre-election polls, some of which predict that neither of them might make it into the next Parliament.

Riding on the wave of pre-election polls, DBM conducted its own together with the Final Word, a daily internet bulletin published in English in the Czech Republic. Although the subscribers do not fit the classic statistical models, their political orientation (clearly to the right) and decision-making powers made their post-elections predictions an interesting reading. While other polls favor the leftist parties spearheaded by the Czech social democrats, the managers, on the contrary, foresee any coalition lead by the Civil democrats (ODS) or TOP 09 with the support of the political newcomers. If the respondents were the only referees in the election finals, it seems, the social democrats and the communists would occupy the penalty bench and not only for two minutes for that matter.

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