The Czech opposition parties won one-third of the seats in the recent Senate elections, causing a setback for the ruling center-left coalition government and strengthening the opposition’s dominance in the upper house of parliament.
The Czech Senate has 27 seats, with a majority of the 27 seats re-elected on the 2nd and 3rd of a total of 81 seats, and a second round of voting will take place on the 9th. The Associated Press reports that the opposition parties, which are mostly center-right, took 26 seats in the two-round election, according to near-full vote counts issued today by the Statistics Office.
Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ centrist party, Action of Discontented Citizens (ANO), won only one seat, while its ruling partner, the left-wing Social Democrats, lost all 10 of its seats.
Their minority government was supported by the far-left Czech Communists in the lower house of parliament, but the Czech Communists did not have a seat in the Senate.
The Party of Mayors and Independents (STAN) won 11 seats; the People’s Democratic Party (ODS), of which Speaker Milos Vystrcil visited Taiwan last month, won five seats; and the Christian Democratic Party (KDS) won three seats.
Czech Senate President Miloš Vystrčil led a six-day delegation to Taiwan on August 30, becoming the highest-level delegation to Taiwan since the Czech Republic’s transition to democracy in 1989 and symbolizing Taiwan’s diplomatic breakthrough in Europe. Vystrčil’s visit to Taiwan has aroused great reverberations from all walks of life, and the Czech Republic’s Senate elections are also attracting attention.
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