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| Europe |
| Czech government fails in no confidence vote |
| 2009-03-25 |
| PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech parties will have a hard time agreeing on a new government after Tuesday's no-confidence vote and an early election is difficult to achieve, leaving the country to face protracted political wrangling. Four defectors from the Czech ruling three-party minority coalition voted alongside the opposition leftists in the vote, bringing the government down halfway through its six-month term as EU president and more than a year before an election scheduled for mid-2010. President Vaclav Klaus, a eurosceptic estranged from Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's Civic Democrats, will now have the right to pick the next prime minister. Topolanek said he wanted Klaus to give him a new mandate to try forming a new cabinet, a hard task given that neither the left nor the right commands majority in the lower house. The balance of power lies with a handful of independents who have defected from both camps. The left may also try to lure over some deputies and form a majority, which would include the far-left Communists, but that may be difficult given the parliamentary numbers. Klaus has in the past refused to allow the Communists any share of power. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 The more I read about the parlimentary form of government, the more it reminds me of the City & County of San Francisco. After years of being run by political mobs, a reform movement passed a new City/County charter in the '30s. The main idea was that to prevent malfeasance by a few, they'd prevent all feasance by the any. It took/takes 100 bureaucrats to say yes but any one can say no. The bottom line is the only way to get anything done is by in-house politics, swapping favors, back-room deals, bribing, etc. |
| Posted by: Slats Shurt4237 2009-03-25 17:34 |