Czech senate vote a litmus test for early election

By Alan Crosby

PRAGUE, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Czechs vote this weekend to elect one third of the Senate in what is seen as a litmus test for possible early parliamentary elections to break a political stalemate in the lower house.

Twenty-seven of the 81 Senate seats are being contested nearly five months after a general election resulted in both leftist and centre-right parties winning 100 seats in the 200-seat lower house.

Czechs will also choose thousands of municipal assembly members in a vote that will also provide evidence of the public mood, but most attention will focus on the Senate race.

Though the Senate vote will not directly change the situation in the lower house, analysts said it is likely to embolden the right to push for early elections, if outgoing Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's Civic Democrats win, as forecast by opinion polls.

"If the Civic Democrats post a strong win, then it will strengthen Topolanek's position ... and the push towards an early election," said political analyst Jiri Pehe.

Topolanek's minority government failed to win a confidence vote at the beginning of the month and President Vaclav Klaus has said he will wait until after the Senate elections before nominating a new candidate for prime minister, which could include the option of an interim government and early elections.

Voting in the first round of the election begins on Friday and continues on Saturday. Any candidate winning an outright majority in his precinct takes the seat. If no candidate has a majority, the top two contest a runoff vote on Oct. 27-28.

Senate and local elections have seen notoriously low voter turnout in recent years, but analysts say that will not be the case this time around given the outcome of the general election.

The private polling agency STEM predicts turnout of around 56 percent, more than double that in the last Senate election.

The rightist Civic Democrats are defending nine seats in the vote, while the leftist Social Democrats are defending just one. The other 17 seats are held by either independents or the centre-right Christian Democrats.

Pehe and other analysts said that the total number of seats won by the Civic Democrats will also be key because of its impact on the 2008 presidential election.

If they can raise their current total of 37 seats in the 81-seat Senate to a majority, President Vaclav Klaus, the founder of the party and its honorary chairman, would be in a strong position to win a second five-year term as both the lower house and Senate vote on the president.

"Klaus will know after the Senate elections if he is strong enough to push for early elections without worrying about alienating the Social Democrats," said political analyst Peter Just.

Some analysts also noted that if the Social Democrats fare well, they and the Civic Democrats may end up having a constitutional majority in both houses, which would allow them to team up and change the electoral law, which they have often spoken of doing.

The two parties had in the past wanted to change the law to weaken the role of smaller parties, although the Civic Democrats have lately been supportive of their small party allies. ((Reporting by Alan Crosby, editing by Giles Elgood; prague.newsroom@reuters.com; Reuters Messaging: alan.crosby.reuters.com@reuters.net; +420 224 190 477))

Keywords: CZECH SENATE