BERLIN, June 5 (UPI) -- The formerly communist Czech Republic has been plunged into political chaos after Sunday's general elections left no political grouping with a real majority. Another weak government is the last thing the country needs.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus Monday called on conservative leader Mirek Topolanek to hold government-forming talks -- not an easy job, for Topolanek's Euroskeptic Civic Democrats won the biggest share of the weekend's vote, but failed to clinch a majority. The Civic Democrats, or ODS, and its two smaller potential centrist allies, the Greens and Christian Democrats, will hold 100 seats in the 200-member lower house -- the same number as the ruling left-wing Social Democrats and the Communists.
According to official results, the ODS won 81 of the 200 parliamentary seats, the Social Democrats won 74, the Communists took 26, the Christian Democrats had 13 and the Greens won 6.
Social Democrat Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek, known for his stubbornness, has refused to accept real defeat after the poll split.
"I would like to remind you, gentlemen, just in case you haven't realized it yet, that you will not even be able to lift a finger without us, the opposition," he said.
The stalemate could result in an unlikely right-left grand coalition government much like the German model formed late last year. But before the balloting, both sides had dismissed any notions of coalition plans floated in the media.
"Those are quite different political sides with even more different personalities," Gereon Schuch, Central and Eastern Europe expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign policy think tank, Monday told United Press International via telephone. "It's hard to imagine that they can work together smoothly."
The only other option, a minority government, is currently being tried in Poland, with little success.
"The question is: Does any party want that? In a minority government, the ruling party would easily become a target for the opposition," Schuch said.
The opposition ODS, who had promised to fight corruption, cut taxes and introduce business-friendly reforms to further fuel the Czech economy, had been the favorites to win the vote and form a center-right government. The Social Democrats have staged a comeback in recent months by highlighting the risks of the rightists' sweeping reforms plans; at the same time, they had to fight allegations that their leaders were involved in corruption and crime scandals linking them to the Prague Mafia.
"The ODS took a wrong step in claiming this country needs radical reforms," Paroubek told the Financial Times newspaper. "Reforms don't mean people have to shed blood."
Paroubek said later he would join the opposition, as his party will not back a coalition with the Czech Communist Party, which has been against modernizing reforms since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The election failed in what it was supposed to achieve -- putting an end to years of political instability after the break-up of what was communist Czechoslovakia.
In 2002, Czech voters returned a split verdict that forced the Social Democrats into a coalition with the Christian Democrats and the Liberals. The ODS has constantly fired at the government, despite its quite successful economic record.
One of the most prosperous of the post-Communist states, the Czech Republic has been steadily recovering from an economic recession since 1999. While the rate of corruption remains high, the Czech Republic's economy got a further boost when the country joined the European Union in May 2004. The next step for further EU integration would be for Prague to drop the koruna and join the Eurozone, which could happen by 2010.
The country now needs a stable government if it does not want to fall further behind in the economic race that has gripped Eastern Europe, observers say. Baltic states top that contest, with Czech Republic's neighbor Slovakia coming closely behind.
Four years of political bickering would put the Czech Republic even further behind.
When it comes to forming a stable government, a key role may fall to the Greens, who won 6.3 percent of the vote and will become the first Green Party to enter an East European parliament, despite -- or because of -- the ongoing environmental problems troubling the region.
The Czech stalemate may well continue and end up mirroring the German case, where political uncertainty loomed for weeks late last year.
And the region is hardly able to take a breather: On June 17, Slovakians will go to the polls to decide on a government in what politicians there call the most important election for the country since the fall of communism. As in the Czech Republic, the vote's outcome is expected to be razor-thin.
