Postview: Another dark day for Czech democracy

In May's general election, Czech voters moved in droves toward upstart political parties in an expression of general discontent with the state of politics in this country. What did they get for their trouble?

A government led by the Civic Democrats (ODS), one of the political parties that have dominated the country for the past 20 years and one of the leading causes of this aforementioned anger. To make matters worse, the voters' push for a change in the status quo led to a prime minister, Petr Nečas, who is closely allied with the ultimate political insider, President Václav Klaus.

The ODS lost Prague in that election to one of those upstart parties, TOP 09, and lost it again to the same party five months later in local elections. And what have voters gotten for their troubles this time around?

A City Hall government led by the ODS, a party that has been plagued by corruption allegations at the city level for most of the past decade, whose local party bosses have come to symbolize all that is abhorred in the Czech political system. Just to make their contempt for public opinion as obvious as possible, the ODS proceeded to circumvent their ideologically similar partners in the national government (and the actual winners of the election), TOP 09, during coalition negotiations. Instead, they will partner with the Social Democrats (ČSSD), a party with which they have nothing in common other than a two-decade-old network of back-room business connections.

Presently, the most popular party at the national level, the ČSSD, which has an outright majority in the Senate and the most seats in Parliament's other house, the Chamber of Deputies, is not represented in government. In Prague City Hall, again despite being the most popular party among voters, TOP 09 is sidelined from key decision-making processes.

There is a name for a system where political leadership always ends up in the same hands regardless of the will of voters. They call it a one-party state, and while one would think Czechs, including political elites, have seen enough of this, it appears they will cope with it some more, whether they like it or not.