Pravo has received the text of Zeman's plan from the Friends of Milos Zeman association.
According to Zeman, Social Democrat prime minister in 1998-2002, Czech cabinets should be formed by the election-winning party and the remaining parties should enable its establishment.
A permanent dialogue should be conducted between the government and the opposition, Zeman says.
He rejects the idea of the grand coalition [between the two strongest parties, the Civic Democrats (ODS) and the Social Democrats (CSSD), Pravo writes.
Zeman's "recipe" is to solve the unstable situation where the election-winning party is left to the mercy of its junior coalition partners and the cabinet is often rocked by a series of crises, Pravo writes.
The Czech Republic needs a strong and stable government "that would govern the country for the whole election term so that it could implement its programme plans," Friends of Milos Zeman quote him as saying.
"The [present] weak and fragile coalitions which include small parties in parliament enable mutual excuses [by the coalition partners] for parties failure to implement the essential parts of their election programmes, and in the long run they do not benefit the parties," Zeman says.
He points to the fate of the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) and the Freedom Union (US-DEU), former junior government parties that have been ousted from the scene meanwhile, and of the Greens (SZ), the current junior ruling party tormented by internal disputes.
Zeman, nevertheless, is sharply opposed to the emergence of a grand coalition.
"The so called grand coalition, involving the two strongest parties in parliament, either results in their programmes being mutually neutralised, which means the two parties' voters are cheated, or in the discrediting of the weaker of the parties, whose officials can trade their party's programme for lucrative posts," Zeman writes.
"Besides, the grand coalition prevents an effective control of the government by parliament," he says.
He proposes measures such as preferential election votes and legislative changes, including changes in the election law, to be introduced so that the broadest possible public takes part in the choice of political leaders.
The Friends of Zeman promise to push for the lowering of the percentage limit of preferential votes necessary for a candidate's election.
They also want voters to be able to support candidates running for more parties, Pravo writes.
Another step Friends of Zeman promote is an increase in the number of electoral regions so that there are fewer candidates in each region and people need not choose from among candidates they do not know at all.
Praising Zeman, the association of his friends openly says it seeks his political comeback.
Zeman, now 63, headed a CSSD minority government that was kept afloat by the senior opposition ODS in exchange for a portion of power, under a power-sharing pact known as "opposition agreement."
Zeman voluntarily stepped down as CSSD chairman in 2001 and he retired after his government's term expired in mid-2002.
He has been living in his country house in south Moravia, from where he has sharply criticised the policy of his successors at the head of the CSSD and of the Czech government.
In the past year he withdrew from the CSSD, where, nevertheless, he still has a number of fans.
(Ceske Noviny)
more info >>
<< Back