Presidential Elections 2008: Continuous Highlights

Saturday
February 9

The third round of the first vote took place today. President Vaclav Klaus got 139 votes, he needed 140 to win the elections. Three legislators were absent today, all of them due to medical conditions. One MP for Social Democrats is said to have collapsed after some tough negotiations with the governing Civic Democrats (ODS). The ODS party denied any involvement and said that this accusation is a dirty lie.

The result of the above is that the new president has not been elected. The second vote will have to take place in which some parties might nominate new candidate(s).

Thousands of people have joined internet discussions (especially on news servers) and criticized politicians for staging this absurd comedy… 

The second vote is to take place on February 15.

Friday
February 8

The open vote took place. The first round of the first vote had no winner because in order to win the candidate needs to receive more than 50 percent. The second round of the first vote took place immediately afterwards. BUT– as it was almost nine p.m. and since it had been agreed to end the session at nine, the session did indeed end. There were some attempts to prolong the session but most legislators behaved like idiots. They argued about procedural changes, they insisted on voting whether they should vote on the prolongation of the session, the parties accused one another of causing the deadlock (see post below).

Presidential Elections: Deadlock and Bummer

The ceremony of Czech presidential elections has not started yet, despite the fact that both chambers of the Parliament met at 10 a.m. CET (right now it is 6 p.m.) and the president might not be elected in the next (many) hours. The legislators have not reached the decision as to whether the vote should be secret or open. There are even some disputes within the government coalition.

So, one huge far-from-being-over deadlock, and foreign observers might think the Czech political scene is pretty fucked up, and they would be almost right. The selection of the next president is a political battle in which people, voters and taxpayers can only stand in distance, on the horizon even, and watch and wait.

To make it short: the parties that support the open vote principle want everyone to know how each legislators voted so that traitors can be identified, whereas the party that supports the secret vote would like to keep the names secret because the party lobbyists are said to have convinced those potential traitors from other parties to vote for their candidate, who is  president Vaclav Klaus…

I swear, if we don’t have the direct vote by 2013, I will go and live naked in the bushes on U.S. Virgin Islands.

TO BE UPDATED AS THE SITUATION DEVELOPS…