PREVIEW: Czech premier faces sceptical party on eve of EU presidency

By Katerina Zachovalova Dec 4, 2008, 15:00 GMT

Prague - Weeks before the Czech Republic is set to take over the six-month rotating EU presidency, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek faces a leadership test from his own party.

Topolanek's governing Civic Democratic Party is unlikely to punish him for the party's brutal losses in October regional and Senate elections when it votes for its new leadership Sunday after two days of meetings.

The Civic Democrats 'know that European issues are, in general, sensitive for its voters and it also does not want to risk the country's reputation,' said political scientist Jan Kubacek, who lectures at the Prague-based Charles University.

By Thursday, most regional congresses backed the premier, giving priority to pragmatic politics over ideology. Topolanek's rival for the party leadership, Prague Mayor Pavel Bem, lagged in polls due to platform that was garnering little party support.

The candidates are split over the future of Topolanek's three- party coalition government, as well as over the party's stance towards the European Union's reform treaty.

Bem said that the Czechs should come up with a new, shorter reform pact during their EU presidency that would replace the Lisbon Treaty, which has stalled since Irish voters rejected it in June.

The Czech Republic is the last member state to vote on the accord. If the country ratifies the treaty, its future will depend on an eventual second Irish referendum.

Topolanek, who signed the pact on the country's behalf in December 2007, has since given it reluctant support. He sees it as a compromise and says the only alternative would be to withdraw from the EU.

Bem also wants to abandon Topolanek's current three-party coalition and replace it with a minority government. Such a reshuffle could collapse and force an early election, which the Civic Democrats would almost certainly lose.

Bem belongs to a conservative, euroscpetic minority camp within the party that is backed by President Vaclav Klaus. The president is hostile to deeper European integration and the bloc's reform treaty.

Klaus has been also long hostile to Topolanek, whom he most recently attacked as a lapdog to EU's power players.

If the premier defends his post at the party's helm, some of the president's followers plan to found a new party.

However, Klaus' office said Thursday that the president will address the congress on Saturday.

In a bid to appease the president's followers, Topolanek said that he would not support the Lisbon Treaty if the lower house takes it up next week in a session summoned by the leftist opposition. Political analysts say Topolanek's move does not indicate he is backing away from the treaty. Rather, they say, it is a maneuver to appease party members.

'It is a pre-congress game,' Kubacek said. 'He wants to signal to eurosceptic delegates that he is a strong leader who will not accept orders from others.'