VZCZCXYZ0000
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHPG #1056/01 2421402
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 301402Z AUG 06
FM AMEMBASSY PRAGUE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 7891
INFO RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC

UNCLAS PRAGUE 001056 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EUR/NCE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL EZ
SUBJECT: LEADERSHIP OF CZECH CHRISTIAN DEMOCRAT PARTY 
(KDU-CSL) RESIGNS 
 
¶1. SUMMARY  (SBU) Just days after the fiercely anti-Communist 
Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) joined a surprising coalition 
with the Social Democrats (CSSD) that would have relied on 
the tacit support of the Communist Party (KSCM), the party 
chair Miroslav Kalousek, and three of the party's five Deputy 
Chairs, including Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda, have 
resigned amid widespread opposition to the hastily arranged 
partnership among the party's rank and file. It is still 
unclear who will lead the party in the future and whether the 
party's policies will change as a result.  For now, the 
high-level purge has had a cautionary effect on the other 
major parties and handed the initiative back to Prime 
Minister designate Mirek Topolanek of the Civic Democrats. 
The resignations by the Christian Democrats will probably 
have less effect on U.S.-Czech relations than the lessons and 
opportunities other parties draw from the incident.  END 
SUMMARY 
 
¶2. (SBU) Outgoing Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek (CSSD) stunned 
the nation last week when he announced that he was ending 
talks with the Civic Democrats (ODS), who won the June 2-3 
elections and were putting the finishing touches on a 
minority government.  Paroubek then made public that he was 
cutting a deal with the right-of-center, religious and 
anti-Communist Christian Democrats, on a minority government 
that relied on the Communist Party for support.  Some 
analysts feel that Kalousek was forced into the deal by 
dwindling support for his own party, by the prospect of four 
years in the opposition, and by the looming threat of a 
CSSD-ODS partnership that would have promoted a change to the 
election law beneficial to large parties and harmful to small 
ones, such as the Christian Democrats. Those inclined to 
conspiracies, and there are many in the Czech Republic, 
suspect that Paroubek, who never liked Kalousek, might have 
used information on yet unconfirmed bribery and scandals 
going back to Kalousek's days in the Ministry of Defense to 
force him into an alliance that Kalousek's party would never 
support. (One joke making the rounds in the Czech parliament 
is that Kalousek made so much unlawful money off the Army's 
purchase of the Swedish fighter jets, the Gripens, that he 
can now afford to be the most honest man in government.) 
Whether Kalousek was intentionally lured into a trap, or 
simply had no other option, he did ask a handful of the 
party's top leaders for their consent, and then grudgingly 
agreed to the arrangement, in spite of his party's 
anti-Communist stance. 
 
¶3. (U) The reaction was swift and unmistakably clear. 
Several of the party's bigger local chapters and several of 
the party's 13 parliamentarians condemned the deal as a 
betrayal of all the party stood for. On Friday, August 25, 
within a day of agreeing to the arrangement, Kalousek 
resigned. By Monday, August 28, three of the party's five 
Deputy Chairs, including Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda, had 
also resigned. Not long after he defeated FM Svoboda for the 
party's chairmanship in the fall of 2003, Kalousek began 
shifting the party, which had always been a flexible centrist 
kingmaker, to the right.  This culminated in March of 2005 
when he pulled the party out of a coaltion with the Social 
Democrats amid charges that CSSD Prime Minister Stanislav 
Gross had used illicit funds to buy his personal residence. 
In the campaign for this year's elections, the party ran as 
an overt ally of the right-of-center Civic Democrats.  It is 
still unclear what the party's new leadership will look like, 
who will lead the party in ongoing talks on forming the 
government, what new priorities the party might have, or 
where it will position itself on the political spectrum. The 
party will be tested in the upcoming October 20-21 local and 
Senate elections, and will hold a nationwide congress in 
December, by which time it should be more clear whether the 
effect of the leadership turnover will be long-lasting, or 
whether the party might even come through the purge 
strengthened. The party certainly needs new blood. The 
average age of the party's members is 63, only slightly 
better than the Communist Party. Furthermore, geographic 
distribution of party supporters is such that it risks 
becoming a regional party concentrated on Moravia, rather 
than a national party. 
 
¶4. COMMENT. (SBU) The purge at KDU-CSL will have few direct 
consequences for bilateral ties.  With the exception of its 
occasional opposition to Turkish membership in the EU, the 
Christian Democrats take few stands that challenge U.S. 
policy. Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda has been a good friend 
to the U.S. If he doesn't bounce back from his resignation 
from his party seat, the U.S. will have lost a strong 
supporter.  Svoboda is expected to resign Friday, September 
1, along with all the other members of Paroubek's cabinet, so 
the immediate effect of his departure will be limited. 
 
Whoever takes over the party reins, he or she is very 
unlikely to take anything but a critical stance towards the 
Communists. Although President Klaus has, since the 
stalemated June elections, twice invited the Chairman of the 
Communist Party to the Executive Office for talks, it seems 
clear that cooperation with the Communists is still taboo 
among KDU-CSL voters. The outcry and consequent resignations 
could resonate across the political spectrum. CSSD will 
probably be more discreet in its dealings with the Communists 
in the coming days. Leaders at both ODS and CSSD might see a 
danger in deals that sacrifice principles in order to retain 
power, thus making it harder for them to conclude an 
opposition agreement or grand coalition, which both parties 
have promised not to do. 
 
¶5. (SBU) It is too soon to say whether the leadership 
turnover will help the party reverse the decline of the last 
few years, or mark the beginning of the end. A weakened 
KDU-CSL could have long-term implications for the left-right 
balance of power. If early elections were to be held next 
year, and the Christian Democrats, who took a disappointing 
7.2% of the votes in the June election, were to fall below 
the 5% threshold for entry into parliament, that would leave 
the Civic Democrats alone on the right side of the political 
spectrum.  Neither the Social Democrats nor the Communists 
will benefit from the purge of the Christian Democrat 
leadership, but together, they have consistently beaten ODS. 
Neither of the nation's two biggest parties have ever won 
enough seats to form a majority government on their own. It 
has always been the little parties that gave them their 
majority. The fate of the shrinking, center-right Christian 
Democrats will have an impact on the local and Senate 
elections in October, and possibly on early elections next 
year, if that is what the government of Mirek Topolanek 
(ODS), which is expected to take over at the start of 
September, leads the nation to.  In the short run, the purges 
will cause everyone to step back and calm down, giving 
Topolanek more time and breathing room to put together a 
successful minority ODS government.  In the long run, a 
weakened, possibly extraparliamentary KDU-CSL could benefit 
Paroubek. 
 
 
CABANISS