Czech gov approves implementing bill on direct presidential polls

The bill does not include any caps on the election campaign.

Government representatives still want to discuss the bill with the parties in parliament.

The direct presidential election has been approved by both houses of parliament.

People will be electing a new head of state like they elect senators now.

Candidates will be proposed by minimally 20 deputies, or ten senators, or by people in the form of a petition with 50,000 signatures.

The formalities of the candidacies as well as the petitions will be checked by the Interior Ministry like in European Parliament (EP) elections.

Parties want campaign caps to be set, but they have not agreed on any specific figures. The government did not include them in the implementing bill because it is afraid that the direct presidential election would be frustrated if parliament rejected this technical bill over disagremeent on the caps.

Prime Minister Petr Necas, who was absent from today´s government meeting, said in the past caps must be set if the election is to be "effective and transparent."

He said, however, it is necessary that all possible problems be solved for the system to be really operable.

The government approved today an increase in the "error percentage," or a limit to the percentage of wrong signatures under the petition with which people will support their candidates from 1 to 3 percent.

The Interior Ministry originally proposed 1 percent only.

Under the approved government bill, the Interior Ministry will check a sample of 8500 randomly selected signatures under the petition.

If more than 3 percent of signatures are wrong, another 8500 signatures will be checked. If more than 3 percent of them are also wrong, the candidacy will be rejected.

If less than 3 percent of wrong signatures are found in the second sample, the wrong names will be deducted from the total number of signatures, and if the rest is lower than 50,000, the candidate will also be rejected.

The implementing bill also gives the presidential candidates free space on Czech Television (CT) and Czech Radio (CRo) for their election clips.

Candidates for senators do not have this advantage, that is also enjoyed by parties ahead of the Chamber of Deputies and EP elections.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz