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Election Manual for Czech Republic 2010

by Dr. Hubert Gehring, Tomislav Delinić, Kevin Urbanski

Czech Republic before the elections of the Camber of Deputies on May 28th and 29th, 2010

The Election Manual on the elections for the Czech Chamber of Deputies at the end of May 2010 presents both the voting system and the parties, candidates and programs in a detailled way.

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“The relations between Germany and Czech Republic have never been so good as they are today.” – this statement can currently often be heard regarding the relationship of the two states. And in fact the success stories, e.g. in economy, show that work on a collective future has not started only by now.

But who is Czech Republic? In Germany as a neighbor, what do we know? In a political aspect some may immediately think of the Czech President Vacláv Klaus, who often comments on the current developments in his home country and the world in a memorable and opinionated way.

Lately, in the year 2009, everybody was speaking about “the Czechs”, who plunged the European Union into a crisis in the time of their own Presidency of the European Council. The catalyst was the overthrow of the government of the prime minister and president of the council at that time, Mirek Topolánek, which was caused by internal political fights for power, of which external observers did barely know anything. The label of the “euro-skeptical Czechs” was readily available.

Is it really like this? Are “all the Czechs” skeptical about the European Union and “opinionated”? Is Vacláv Klaus a good example for the rest of the Czech population? Apparently in Germany the neighboring country is not that well-known. An anecdote stands for this symptomatically: A reliable German online news service names Communists and Christian-Democrats as the governing coalition in Czech Republic. Of course, this is wrong, but scarcely anybody realized it.

In contrast, Czech Republic is an important trade partner of the German Federal Republic, not only within the European Union. According to data of the German-Czech Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Germany had a trade volume of 56 billion Euro with its Eastern neighbor in 2008, being in the same range as with Japan or whole Latin America including Mexico and Brazil. This should be reason enough to have a closer look at the Republic at the Vltava river.

Czech Republic, so close and yet so far? Probably not any longer after a look at the present Election Manual. Related to the upcoming elections for the Chamber of Deputies on May 28th and 29th, 2010 KAS Prague has summarized the main facts regarding politics in Czech republic, the protagonists, the parties and their election programs, in order to have an easy and quick overview of the current situation - in a concentrated and descriptive design.

Why, for example, do elections always result in such slight majorities in Czech Republic? Who are the top candidates of the most important parties? Which coalition can be thought of? Those and more questions we set out to answer with our Election Manual.

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Editor

Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V.

erscheinungsort

Freiburg Deutschland