More election success for Czech communists

by Ken Biggs

Czech Communists won an extra 1300 seats in the November 1-2 elections to 
village, town and city councils. Party Vice-Chair Zuzka Rujbrova said the 
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (CPBM) was one of the few 
parliamentary parties to improve its position and it had also 
"significantly strengthened its position" in the biggest towns.

The right-wing Christian Democrats and Freedom Union, the Social Democrats' 
government coalition partners, suffered heavy losses.

Sixty-two thousand seats were at stake overall in the elections, which were 
contested on a party-list system of proportional representation.

The CPBM was defending over 6,200 seats it won at the 1998 local elections.

Most seats, especially in the villages and smaller towns, were as usual won 
by candidates standing as independents, although a good number of these are 
CPBM supporters and sympathisers or people willing to work with the Party.

The CPBM's most important gains were in the Czech Republic's 16 biggest 
towns, where it increased its 1998 vote by 131,314 votes on a lower turnout 
(down from 45% in 1998 to 43.4%). It won 131 seats in the cities, a net 
gain of 29, reflecting an almost seven per cent increase in its share of 
the poll to 16.6 per cent.

The Communists did particularly well in the industrial cities of North 
Bohemia, North Moravia and Silesia, where workers, their families and 
communities have been hit hardest by unemployment since the post-1989 
return to capitalism. Communist candidates topped the poll in the mining 
towns of Karvina, with 34.4 per cent of the vote, Most (28%) and Havirov 
(26%).

In the steel and engineering city of Ostrava the Communists increased their 
vote by almost four per cent to 20.6 per cent at the expense of both the 
right-wing Civic and Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats.

The same weekend also saw the Communists hold all of their eight seats on 
the old Prague City Council in the first elections to Prague's new regional 
council, as well as the only one of their three seats in the Senate (the 
Czech parliament's upper house) where there was an election.

Eduard Matykiewicz won the Karvina constituency in a second round straight 
fight with a right-wing candidate, polling 51.8% of the votes.

Czech Communist leader Miroslav Grebenicek criticised the first-past-the-
post system used in the Senate elections: "Some of the four other Communist 
candidates who got through to the second round and lost in the run-off got 
more votes than right-wing candidates winning in the second round."

Zuzka Rujbrova welcomed the fact that the Communist and Social Democrat 
votes in the second round had generally increased as a result of supporters 
of both parties voting for the other party's candidates against right-wing 
candidates.

In the Louny seat, for example, the Communist candidate's first round vote 
of 5795 rose to 15,234 in the second round.

A higher turnout in the second round (up from 21.6% in the first round to 
32.6%) was another factor. The 81 Senators and the 150-member Chamber of 
Deputies will hold a joint meeting on January 15th next year to elect 
President Vaclav Havel's successor.

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