Jiří Paroubek: How will the municipal elections in Prague turn out?
Making election estimates of political party preferences during the holiday months is somewhat tricky. In addition, the situation we are experiencing in the country and indeed in the whole of Europe is quite turbulent. High inflation, the war in Ukraine, a high rise in commodity prices on world markets, but also a certain helplessness of the government in solving the country’s ordinary and extraordinary problems.
Especially in the cities, however, it traditionally has a lot of support from the large ODS and TOP 09 in the middle classes of the middle class. The TOGETHER project for the House of Representatives in another election year proved to be a success for the center-right parties, because if they ran individually, some of them would not even have to get into the House of Representatives. On the contrary, the ANO movement lost political allies in the form of social democrats and communists, so even if today’s ruling party does not win the majority of the majority of voters’ votes in the elections, as roughly 1 million voters’ votes were lost to groups that did not receive 5% of electoral support, the current government won by Czech standards great parliamentary support. A total of 108 mandates against the opposition’s 92 mandates. The political left fell out of the lower house for the first time. That is, both the KSČM and the Social Democrats. The government’s position has therefore been politically very sensitive from the very beginning, since for the first time since the time of the First Republic, there are more than three political parties in the government coalition. And of course, in such a case, bargaining within a coalition government is somewhat problematic.
In principle, the government cannot handle the problems associated with high inflation and its impact on the standard of living of broad sections of the Czech population.
The September elections to municipal councils and by-elections to the Senate will be a litmus test that will show the current political position of the government and its power to enforce the changes it has set out to achieve.
The government makes it clear that its main interest is to dramatically increase military spending, which will inevitably lead to the suppression of other spending in the social, educational, health, but also in the development of transport infrastructure, the development of science, etc.
The government’s intentions to purchase tens of billions of military equipment in unprecedented quantities (24 F-35 aircraft, 200 armored vehicles and two dozen Leopard tanks) indicate a certain loss of judgment.
So far, the government has done nothing to bring inflation down to reasonable numbers. It does not want to apply any of the measures that are normally adopted in most countries of the European Union. Whether it is a price ceiling or a reduction or elimination of VAT or consumption taxes for selected items of fuel, energy and food.
Reported inflation in the Czech Republic in July will reach 17.5% of the entire broad consumption basket. But if we were to take 30-40 really necessary items of basic food and necessities for the population, inflation numbers between 20-25% would not be surprising.
By the way, the year-on-year increase in industrial producer prices in July will reach 27.8%, and the increase in agricultural producer prices will reach 39.8%. These high numbers indicate that I am probably right with my estimate of current real inflation – i.e. consumer price growth – between 20-25%.
Analysis of electoral preferences of parties in Prague
According to a July survey by the Phoenix research agency, the strongest party in the nearest Prague council would be the group SPOLU pro Praha (ODS, KDU-ČSL, TOP 09), i.e. a group of a conservative nature. In the survey, he gets a little more than a quarter of voters (26.5%). But compared to the July survey, support went down by 7% (it had 33.7%).
The YES movement is in second place with 17.1%. The ANO movement also lost a little over 2% of voters compared to the previous month.
In August, if there were elections, Prague itself would become the third strongest grouping in the Prague council with 15.6% of the vote. Prague recorded a month-on-month increase in support of almost 3%.
According to the agency’s survey, the pirates won less than a tenth of the voters and are seeing a certain increase in support.
The STAN movement – as expected – marks a series of affairs that have accompanied the second strongest government party since the beginning of the center-right government’s existence. In surveys in August, STAN won 3.7% in Prague and its support has a downward trend.
Other parties that remain in front of the council’s gates would be the Solidarita grouping, which mainly includes the ČSSD and the Greens. Quite unsurprisingly, this alliance only gets 3.1% in the survey.
The situation is similar for the electoral alliance formed around the SPD, which receives 3.1% preferences.
The Communists would get a mere 1.5% of the votes in Prague.
The election results, if they were identical to the results of the Phoenix research in August, would give a great chance of restoring the current ruling coalition in the Prague municipality, where only the ODS would replace the STAN movement in the city council.
It seems that the voters in Prague do not reflect at all – apart from the understandable decimation of the STAN movement – the poor results of the ruling coalition at the Prague City Hall. Let us recall that the town hall did not achieve much of the main election promises of the campaign four years ago. The construction of the new metro line is still being delayed, new bridges are not standing, old bridges are being reconstructed at a snail’s pace. There is only talk about the construction of communal apartments. The inner city ring road is being prepared at a snail’s pace, so the strangest start date for its completion is ten years from now.
Simply put, the current management of the town hall is incapable of action, unconceptual, incompetent. That is, if I compare his activities with the activities of the leaders of the garniture in the metropolitan cities in the immediate vicinity, whether it is Vienna, Munich, Dresden or Berlin. These cities are developing dynamically. Prague sleeps when it comes to large public investments.
Embarrassing role of social democracy
According to my estimations, the pre-election concept of Petříček and Šmerda (respectively Pokorný and Poche) to create a pre-election alliance with the Greens, in which a former ombudsman who had never worked in municipal politics became the leader, ended with the election result of the ČSSD, or Solidarity group, by debacle.
The party in Prague does nothing (in other words, nothing at the central level that would attract public interest. It cannot qualifiedly criticize the inaction of the current Prague City Hall, nor can it show its own program intentions in a qualified manner. Miracles were not to be expected, but from this point of view, 3% of the electoral preferences of the ČSSD and the Greens in Prague, they are actually still a miracle.
It came out on Vasevec.cz. Published with permission of the publisher