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).