New vote on Czech president scheduled for Friday

Feb 9, 2008, 18:26 GMT

Prague - Czech lawmakers from both houses of parliament are to convene Friday to elect a president, they said after the voting process ended Saturday without producing a new head of state.

They are to choose a president to hold office for the next five years, including the Czech Republic's presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2009.

The entire voting process is to start all over again, as the parliamentarians failed to elect a president in the third round of voting, in which the winner must gain a majority of all lawmakers present.

The first two rounds of voting took place late Friday after a protracted battle over whether the new Czech president should be elected in a secret or open ballot.

Neither candidate - incumbent Vaclav Klaus, 66, and Czech-US economist Jan Svejnar, 55 - scored the required majority of 140 votes from the 278 lawmakers present in Saturday's last ballot.

The frontrunner, political veteran Klaus, missed re-election by one vote as 139 lawmakers raised their hand in his favour. Political neophyte Svejnar won 113 votes.

Both Klaus and Svejnar told reporters that they were ready to run again.

Klaus, a Euro-sceptic who has also expressed doubts about global warming, symbolizes the post-communist era and stressed continuity, while pro-European Svejnar offered to take the country to the future.

The outcasts of Czech politics, the Communists, plan to introduce another candidate, whom they must register by midnight on Tuesday.

Such a move is expected to aid Klaus, as it would split his opponents. A failure to re-elect the highly-divisive incumbent threatens to shake up his nominator, the Civic Democratic Party that he had co-founded and led, and the fragile centre-right ruling coalition.

Three parliamentarians, two of whom were expected to vote for Klaus, were not present during the vote, as they allegedly taken ill or collapsed during the protracted and highly-charged election session that started Friday.

The lawmakers, who do not usually enjoy the respect of their voters, have enraged the public, as the election process was beset by bitter scrambling and obstruction.

Both camps had waged fierce attacks on each other Saturday morning and pressurizing individual lawmakers into voting in their favour.

On Friday, a full afternoon of tug-of-war over voting procedure preceded the two initial ballots that had also failed to produce a winner.

Czech presidents have limited powers, but the office is highly regarded by the public. The president appoints prime ministers, names judges, suggests Constitutional Court judges to the Senate for approval and picks central bankers.