Langer may run for Czech ODS chairman, not for PM

Langer said he could seek the post of "internal chairman" under these circumstances.

Today's LN and the Thursday issue of Hospodarske noviny (HN) reported that some Civic Democrats were considering a "double-track" party leadership.

Under this model, the ODS chairman would only focus on the party management and he would not strive for the supreme executive post of prime minister if the party won parliamentary elections.

"I have never had ambitions to be a chairman as a political leader, but I would not mind the idea of me as a man in the position dealing with the party's life who does not occupy any executive post," Langer told LN.

He added it was a mere theoretical consideration based on his experience from the government.

Langer occupied the post of interior minister in the previous centre-right coalition cabinet of Mirek Topolanek.

He reminds that ODS chairman and PM Topolanek then focused on the governing and the Czech EU presidency (in the first half of 2009) and had no time for his own party.

However, most Civic Democrats, addressed by CTK, do not support the Langer-proposed model very much.

Many of them, who requested anonymity, admitted that Langer was thereby mainly making up a model to enable him to steer the party.

"I do not much believe in a double-track model and in someone having ambitions to lead the party 'inwards,' but not 'externally,'" LN quotes Pavel Drobil, ODS deputy chairman in the Moravian-Silesian Region, whom Topolanek named among his possible successors at the party helm, as saying.

Autor: ČTK
www.ctk.cz