Czechs would vote on Friday and Saturday in their country’s first direct presidential election amid recession, austerity and graft weighing heavily on the nation as it turns the page on a decade under ardent eurosceptic Vaclav Klaus.
Two ex-prime ministers, both former Communists, are tipped to finish atop a list of nine first-round candidates. Although polls suggest outspoken leftist Milos Zeman is the likely candidate for the presidency of the European Union state of 10.5 million people, he is unlikely to score the simple majority needed to clinch a first-round victory, and will likely face mild-mannered centre-rightist Jan Fischer in the second round.
The winner will replace two-term President Klaus, one of Europe’s staunchest eurosceptics. No matter their political stripe, candidates have sought to distance themselves from his hardline anti-EU stance.Prague is one of just two EU countries in central Europe currently suffering from recession and economic matters, including biting austerity cuts, are weighing on voters’ minds. Heavily dependent on car exports to Eurozone states hit hard by the debt crisis, the economy was forecasted to shrink by 0.9 percent in 2012 before expanding by 0.2 percent this year. Surveys released this week gave Zeman, 68, who served as prime minister between 1998 and 2002, between 23 and 25 percent popular support. This compared to 16 to 20 percent for his nearest rival, 62-year-old Fischer, also a prime minister between 2009 and 2010. “I want to be the president of all people,” including Communists and those on the right, Zeman said recently on the campaign trail.
Fischer, a former chief statistician, headed a technocratic caretaker government that managed an economic recovery in 2010 which saw the economy expand by 2.3 percent after a biting 4.4-percent contraction amid the global crisis in 2009. Insisting he is “still sorry” for his Communist past, Fischer’s campaign has echoed Zeman’s bid to woo voters from both left and right with promises of transparency aimed at targeting graft.
