Tschechische Republik: Eine enthauptete Regierung

Ministerpräsident Stanislav Gross begeht politischen Selbstmord, seine Regierung jedoch ersteht aus ihrem Grab auf. Transitions Online berichtet.

Four months after the ground began to shake under his feet, the Czech prime minister, Stanislav Gross, has stepped down. A new government headed by a junior minister in Gross’ cabinet was appointed by President Vaclav Klaus on 25 April.

The government is new mainly in name. The same three parties that formed the Gross government feature in the new administration, and all but four old ministers will be taking their seats again in the new cabinet. The only major difference is the absence of the man whose scandals triggered the government’s downfall, Gross himself.

The new government still needs to win a vote of confidence in parliament, a potentially tricky test as it has only a one-vote majority. However, three potential rebels from Gross’ party, the Social Democrats (CSSD), have reportedly said they will not torpedo the new government. 

A winning vote would dash any hopes of early elections still entertained by the country’s most popular party, the right-wing Civic Democrats (ODS). It will also dull – though not dispel – fears that the CSSD might look to the Communist Party for support.

For the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), a member of the Gross government but the principal architects of its downfall, the formation of a Gross-like government without Gross is welcome. Its leader, Miroslav Kalousek, was even reportedly heard shouting “We are the victors” through the doors of his party’s parliamentary rooms. The Christian Democrats had insisted they would remain in government only if Gross were removed. 

That proved a long and trying process. For months, Gross successfully survived attacks over the opaque financing of his luxury flat and questions about his wife’s business affairs. And when, in mid-April, he and three other CSSD negotiators agreed to a new coalition, he swiftly scuppered the deal by then advising the party’s leadership to reject the agreement. Days later, the same agreement was resurrected and Gross’ premiership was duly buried.

For Tomas Nemecek, editor-in-chief of Respekt, one of the two publications that investigated the Gross affair in greatest depth, Gross’ epitaph will be that he was the Czech Republic’s “worst prime minister.” In an article for the business daily Hospodarske noviny, Nemecek depicted him as a “man without qualities” or ideals, a prime minister with no bright spots during his rule and a legacy that amounted to “blank spots.”

Gross himself marked the end of his leadership of the government in the same way as he had fought to maintain it, by blaming the “unnatural course of events” in the affair on unnamed “forces who have no right” to involve themselves in politics. He said he had decided to step down because staying on would have entailed “costs for the CSSD and for the whole of society,” but maintained his protracted battle was justified. “A man should fight for as long as he sees a path to a goal that he believes is right,” he told television viewers on 24 April.

The new man in what is an increasingly hot seat is Jiri Paroubek, a minister for just nine months and a man who failed to become a senator in 2000, to get on his party’s list for the European Parliament in 2004, and to become head of the CSSD’s Prague branch this January. Paroubek is the third CSSD prime minister since the last general elections, in 2002.

To read the article in full, visit the Transitions Online website.