Foldyna, a CSSD leader in the Ustecky, north Bohemia, region, said the leaderships of the CSSD, of its group of deputies and of regional organisations should bear responsibility for the departure of Petr Wolf, already the fourth deputy to leave the CSSD group. The issue should be debated at the CSSD central Deputy Wolf leaves Czech opposition Social Democratic Party ...
Czech Communists to back CSSD's no confidence vote proposal ...
Czech CSSD committee nods to new vote of no confidence in govt ... executive committee meeting on Saturday, Foldyna said. CSSD deputy chairman Bohuslav Sobotka said he is for the CSSD to apologise to voters, but he ruled out the existence of up to further 15 dissatisfied CSSD deputies that lobbyist Miroslav Slouf refers to in today's newspapers. Slouf is an ally of former CSSD chairman Milos Zeman, who, though retired since 2002, has steadily criticised his successors at the party helm and the CSSD's policy. Sobotka said no such group of dissatisfied CSSD deputies exists as otherwise it would be clearly noticeable.
Nevertheless, Sobotka did not rule out that the luring of deputies away from the CSSD could continue. "The current government owes its birth to defectors and it will survive with the help of defectors. The need of defectors will grow with the declining loyalty of government deputies," Sobotka said. He said the reasons behind deputies' withdrawals from the CSSD are most often pragmatic. The deputies are lured away in exchange for a career offer or a different reward. The CSSD is convinced that it is the senior governing Civic Democrats (ODS) who has siphoned off deputies from the CSSD. The ODS, however, has dismissed this as has Wolf. According to the server Novinky.cz, Wolf has rejected Sunday's appeal by CSSD chairman Jiri Paroubek that he give up his mandate of a deputy. "Maybe it would be good if Paroubek gave up the mandate of his," Wolf is quoted as saying. CSSD deputies' group deputy chairman David Rath said he believes the ODS has infiltrated the CSSD and also the junior governing Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) in the long run, not only on the central but also on regional levels. The ODS has people in the CSSD who start to work for it whenever necessary, Rath said. Sobotka, however, called this a paranoic theory. Lubomir Zaroalek, an official from the CSSD's Moravian-Silesian branch of which Wolf was a member, today dismissed the situation in the branch being behind Wolf's departure. According to Zaoralek, Wolf's step reflects the ODS and the governing coalition's effort to secure lower house votes in support of certain projects that lack unanimous support from government deputies. "We reject the police and corrupt methods of exerting pressure on lawmakers by the government coalition," Zaoralek said in a press release. The CSSD, which emerged with 74 deputies from the mid-2006 elections, has lost four deputies since. The previous three are Milos Melcak and Michal Pohanka, who were expelled from the CSSD for having enabled the establishment of the centre-right government in January 2007, and Evzen Snitily, who supported the re-election of Vaclav Klaus, the ODS' candidate, as Czech president this February. While Melcak and Pohanka have often voted along with the government since, Snitily has mostly sided with the CSSD. Even along with independents Melcak and Pohanka, the government coalition has only 102 votes in the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies. In certain crucial votes it cannot count on all of them as rebel deputies have emerged in each of the three coalition parties.
(Ceske Noviny)
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