Czech economist Svejnar launches presidential bid

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Economist Jan Svejnar launched his campaign on Friday to become Czech president, challenging incumbent right-winger Vaclav Klaus in the vote due in February.

While presidents hold little day-to-day power, the election by both houses of parliament will test the strength of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and may destabilise his centre-right coalition.

Svejnar, a non-partisan professor at the University of Michigan, in the United States, has won the backing from opposition leftist Social Democrats and the junior government partner, the Green Party.

"Negotiations I've had back my view that I have support in a large part of the political spectre," Svejnar, 55, told reporters.

Topolanek's right-wing Civic Democrats are backing the popular 66-year-old Klaus, founder of the Civic Democrats and a former prime minister who led the country through the first years of post-Communist transformation in the 1990s.

Svejnar emigrated from Communist Czechoslovakia when he was 17 and has mostly lived in the United States. He often criticises Klaus's handling of the economic reforms and supports deeper European integration than the Eurosceptic Klaus.

Klaus is the favourite, although the Civic Democrats are short by 19 votes of the majority needed among the 281 lawmakers in the combined lower and upper houses of parliament.

Topolanek has been under pressure from rivals within the Civic Democrats who demand he secures Klaus's election for a second five-year term.

Political analyst Petr Just said failure to re-elect Klaus, a monetarist free-marketer who calls the fight against global warming a dangerous new ideology, would spark dissent within the Civic Democrats that could topple Topolanek as party chief and possibly even as prime minister.

"With 99 percent probability, it would have an impact on the stability of the government and the coalition rule. The question is, if the government should fall would there be a reshuffle of the coalition ... or if there would be a new government."

Just said the votes of lawmakers from the second junior coalition partner, the centrist Christian Democrats, could be critical in determining who wins the presidential vote.

Analysts say Svejnar may be hurt by the fact that he spends most of his time outside the country, although he has been active in the Czech academia and served as an advisor to former president Vaclav Havel. (Writing by Jan Lopatka, Editing by Matthew Jones)

Keywords: CZECH PRESIDENT/

[PRAGUE/Reuters/Finance.cz]