Občanská Demokratieická strana

Občanská Demokratieická strana Democratic Citizens' Party
Party leader	Petr Fiala (picture)
Deputy Chairman	Jan Zahradil , Miloš Vystrčil , Evžen Tošenovský , Martin Kupka , Martin Novotný
founding	April 21, 1991
Place of foundation	Olomouc
Headquarters	Doudlebská 5, 140 00 Prague 4
Alignment	Liberal conservatism , " clausism ", economic liberalism , EU skepticism
Colours)	blue
Seats in the House of Representatives	25/200 ( 2017 )
Senate mandates	17/81
International connections	IDU
MEPs	4/21
European party	European Conservatives and Reformists Party (EKR)
EP Group	EKR
Website	www.ods.cz

The Democratic Citizens' Party (Czech Občanská democická strana , [ ˈoptʃanskaː ˈdɛmokratɪtskaː ˈstrana ]; abbreviated ODS ) is a liberal - conservative political party in the Czech Republic .

Since independence in 1993, along with ČSSD, it was one of the two dominant large parties in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic and was the Prime Minister from 1993–98, 2006–09 and 2010–13 . Since 2013, however, it has only been the fifth largest parliamentary group in the House of Representatives. In the Senate it is currently (2013) the second strongest party after the Social Democrats (15 of 81 votes), in the European Parliament it has had 2 of the 21 Czech MPs since the 2014 European elections . In terms of membership, it is the fourth largest party (after KSČM , KDU-ČSL and ČSSD ). The most important representatives of the party are the former Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek , the former President and Prime Minister Václav Klaus and the former Prime Minister Petr Nečas .

Since the 2017 House of Representatives election , the ODS has again been the second strongest force in parliament with 25 seats and leads the opposition with Petr Fiala .

development

founding

The party was founded on April 20, 1991 in Olomouc by the then Czechoslovak finance minister and chairman of the citizens' forum Václav Klaus . The citizens ' forum, which saw itself as a non-partisan, split into two halves, and the citizens' movement emerged alongside the ODS .

Klaus government (1993–98)

The ODS was already one of the most influential forces at the time of the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. They each won the elections to the House of Representatives in 1992 and 1996 , Vaclav Klaus was at the head of a bourgeois coalition government of the ODS along with the KDU-ČSL and the Civic Alliance Prime Minister of the Czech Republic and agreed with his Slovak counterpart Vladimir Meciar , the dissolution of the Czechoslovak Federation on 1 January 1993. At that time, the ODS still favored quick accession to the EU .

In 1997, however, there was a government crisis: the sluggish economy and a party donation affair led to criticism of party chairman Klaus. During his stay in Sarajevo, Vice-Chairs Jan Ruml and Ivan Pilip called for his resignation. This led to the withdrawal of the coalition partners KDU-ČSL and ODA from the government, and ultimately to Klaus' resignation. This process is also known in the history of the party as the “Sarajevo assassination attempt”. Václav Klaus was still able to defend the party chairmanship, while Pilip and Ruml founded a new party, the Unie svobody (US, Freedom Union). Until the early elections, the Czech Republic was led by a government of civil servants chaired by State Bank Governor Josef Tošovský because of the difficult majority in parliament .

Tolerance and opposition (1998-2006)

In the new elections, the ODS was able to assert itself as the second strongest party with 28% behind the ČSSD . The ČSSD formed a minority government under Miloš Zeman , which was tolerated by the ODS as part of an “ opposition treaty ”. In return, Václav Klaus was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies .

The 2002 parliamentary elections ended with 24.5% and a relatively bad result for the ODS. The ČSSD formed a coalition with the KDU-ČSL and the US-DEU. So she was no longer dependent on the cooperation with the ODS. Václav Klaus was no longer elected President of Parliament and also made his post as party leader available. Mirek Topolánek was elected as his successor , although Václav Klaus did not support his candidacy and instead called for the election of the narrowly defeated candidate Petr Nečas .

Since then, however, the ODS has been able to stabilize again. Internal disputes between the governing parties and the ČSSD meant that Václav Klaus was surprisingly able to prevail as ODS candidate in the 2003 presidential elections. The ODS also won in the following elections. She won the Senate elections in 2004 and 2006, she won the European elections in 2004 by a large margin and she also won the elections to the regional parliaments in 2004 by a large margin.

Topolánek and Fischer governments (2006-10)

In the parliamentary elections in June 2006 , it was again the strongest political force in the House of Representatives with its historically best result of 35.4% and 81 out of 200 MPs. However, a stalemate between right and left in parliament paralyzed the formation of a government. After a minority government of the ODS, which was formed in September 2006 and was to be supported by the ČSSD by means of an opposition treaty, failed to find a majority in the House of Representatives because the Social Democrats rejected such an alliance, Topolánek formed a coalition government of ODS, KDU-ČSL and Strana zelených (Green Party). In parliament, however, this depended on the support of two members of the ČSSD who had resigned from their parliamentary group and who tacitly tolerated the government. This formation of a government by means of "defectors" was also criticized by President Václav Klaus .

The government led by the ODS could no longer rely on a secure majority in parliament as a result of two factions leaving the SZ parliamentary group from autumn 2008. After the ODS lost massive votes in the Senate and regional elections in 2008, Mirek Topolánek's position within the party was further weakened. The party lost its hegemony in the Senate and all 12 (of 13) regional leaders in one fell swoop . At the party congress from December 5 to 7, 2008, there was a battle vote between Topolánek and the mayor of Prague, Pavel Bém , supported by President and Party founder Václav Klaus , in which Topolánek prevailed with 63.7%. In the meantime, however, Václav Klaus also openly speculated about a break with the ODS, which he had founded, and on December 6, 2008 resigned the party's honorary chairmanship. He announced that he now wanted to support the establishment of a new Eurosceptic party, as the ODS meanwhile took positions that were too EU-friendly for him. In particular, a large part of the party, including Topolánek, has meanwhile spoken out in favor of ratifying the Lisbon Treaty and also voted for this ratification in the House of Representatives, which, thanks to the approval of the coalition partners and the ČSSD, achieved the 3/5 majority required for ratification. However, some MPs, in particular the former Finance Minister Vlastimil Tlustý , did not support this more pro-European stance. As a result, Tlustý, who has long been known as a "rebel", voted against his own party colleague Topolánek in the vote of no confidence brought in by the ČSSD in March 2009, alongside a party colleague and the two MPs who had resigned from the Green Group, and thereby overthrew the ODS government. Tlustý was then expelled from the party and later ran for the Libertas party of Irish Eurosceptic Declan Ganley, which has now also been founded in the Czech Republic .

The ODS then supported the Jan Fischer government in parliament , a civil servant government made up of non-party members , which was supposed to lead the country in early elections in October 2009. In the meantime, the ODS won the European elections in 2009, despite previous internal party disputes .

Following a ruling by the Constitutional Court, the early elections were canceled in the middle of the election campaign, so that the Fischer government should remain in office until the regular election date in May 2010. Originally, the party leader Topolánek should lead the party back into these elections. After controversial statements in an interview about Jews, homosexuals and the Church, Topolánek had to give up his top candidate for the 2010 parliamentary elections under pressure from the party leadership in March 2010 and was replaced by the former Minister of Social Affairs and Deputy Party Chairman Petr Nečas . On April 1, 2010, Topolánek also announced his resignation as party chairman and the handover of official duties to Petr Nečas. He was officially elected third chairman of the ODS on June 20, 2010 with 87% of the delegate votes.

Nečas government (2010-13)

In the 2010 election to the House of Representatives , the party only achieved 20.22%. That was their worst result historically to date. With 53 MPs, it is now only the second largest parliamentary group in the House of Representatives after the ČSSD . Nevertheless, Petr Nečas managed to form a “bourgeois” government with TOP 09 and Věci veřejné , which was initially able to rely on a very comfortable majority in parliament with 118 out of 200 votes. On July 13, 2010, this government was sworn in to Nečas . Due to internal disputes within the Věci veřejné, government work was not always easy. In April 2012 the Věci veřejné resigned from the government. However, Nečas managed to restore his government because some members of the Věci veřejné did not understand the exit from the government and founded the new LIDEM party . With 101 out of 200 seats, this renewed alliance between ODS, TOP 09 and LIDEM only had a narrow majority in parliament.

There was another crisis in the government and in the ODS in autumn 2012 after six members of the ODS in the House of Representatives no longer wanted to support the financial policy course of the party and the government. A poor ODS result in the regional and senate elections in October 2012 also weakened party leader Nečas. In this respect, at the party congress in early November 2012, there was a battle vote for the party chairmanship between Petr Nečas and the former Agriculture Minister Ivan Fuksa , one of the six MPs. However, Nečas successfully defended his position as chairman with 351 out of 592 (178 votes for Fuksa). The party chairman then succeeded in pushing through his controversial plans in parliament with a narrow majority after three of the critics had given up their mandate. A short time later, these three critics were appointed to the supervisory boards of state-owned companies.

Opposition (since 2013)

In the presidential elections in spring 2013, the former Senate President Přemysl Sobotka ran for the ODS , who prevailed in an internal party membership decision with 61% to 39% against the EU MP Evžen Tošenovský . However, Sobotka only received 2.46% in the elections, so that he was eliminated in the first ballot.

On June 17, 2013, Petr Nečas resigned from both the post of Prime Minister and the chairmanship of the ODS. This was preceded by the arrest of his office manager, Jana Nagyová, several influential lobbyists and individuals responsible for the military secret service, as well as three of the six “rebels” who wanted to vote against the government's austerity package in the fall. The three former MPs arrested included Ivan Fuksa and the former leader of the ODS parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies, Petr Tluchoř . In connection with the resignation and subsequent appeal to well-paid supervisory board posts, the public prosecutor's office accused them of bribery of parliamentarians and corruption, in which the prime minister's office manager was also involved. She was also charged with illegally using military intelligence to monitor the premier's wife. The couple had recently separated and filed for divorce.

After Nečas' resignation , the first deputy Martin Kuba took over the party chairmanship temporarily. On June 19, 2013, the party nominated the deputy party leader and President of the House of Representatives Miroslava Němcová to succeed Nečas as Prime Minister . However, President Miloš Zeman ignored this nomination and instead appointed Jiří Rusnok as the new prime minister of an independent "government of experts" on June 25 , despite the fact that the coalition's 101 MPs (out of 200) had declared that they would support Němcová as prime minister. With this step, the President de facto ended the ruling coalition led by the ODS. In the early elections that followed , the party took on Miroslava Němcová as the top candidate. The party lost 12.5% ​​due to the previous affairs and only achieved 7.72% or 16 of 200 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The party thus lost its status as one of the most dominant parties in the Czech party spectrum.

After the elections, the ODS made a radical break: Petr Fiala , the former minister of education and former rector of Masaryk University in Brno , was elected on January 18, 2014, as a new party leader who had only been a member of the party for a few weeks. He prevailed in the first ballot with 437 votes against Miroslava Němcová (66 votes) and Edvard Kožušník (32 votes).

The chairman Petr Fiala managed to stabilize the party. With 11.32% in the 2017 House of Representatives elections , the party gained more votes and became the second largest parliamentary group behind the ANO in 2011 . The ODS is thus the strongest opposition faction against the government of the new Prime Minister Andrej Babiš .

Political classification

In the European spectrum of parties, the ODS can be classified as conservative and economically liberal . Although she herself pursued accession to the European Union during her reign, she is now in parts rather eurosceptic . In the European Parliament , the members of the ODS were members of the European Democrats until 2009 , which together with the Christian Democratic European People's Party form the EPP-ED Group. However, this cooperation with the EPP was viewed with skepticism by both sides because of the ODS's critical attitude towards the EU and because of its more national , liberal and secular character. In July 2006, the ODS, together with the British Conservative Party, founded the Movement for European Reform , which, after the 2009 European elections, established the new European Parliamentary Group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and a new European party , the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists ( AECR).

history

The ODS came into being in April 1991 after the civic forum / Občanské fórum (OF), founded on November 19, 1989, split into the ODS and the OH ( Občanské hnutí / civic movement ).

• November 19, 1989: The citizens' forum is founded.
• October 17, 1990: Václav Klaus is elected chairman of the Citizens' Forum.
• January 12, 1991: At the OF Congress in Hostivař a new program is passed, tensions between the left and right wings of the OF become clear.
• February 23, 1991: The OF's “divorce meeting” (“rozlučkový sněm”) takes place in Prague.
• March 4, 1991: The ODS “Preparatory Committee” (“přípravný výbor”) is held.
• April 20 - April 21, 1991: Founding congress of the ODS in Olomouc .
• November 15, 2002: Mirek Topolánek becomes the new chairman.
• December 7th, 2008: Mirek Topolánek prevailed over the Mayor of Prague Pavel Bém with 63.7% in a voting for the party chairmanship .
• March 25, 2010: Mirek Topolánek is replaced as the top candidate for the 2010 parliamentary elections by Petr Nečas .
• April 1, 2010: Topolánek announces his resignation as party leader.
• May 29, 2010: In the parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic 2010 , the party achieved a relatively poor result with 20.2%, but was still able to form the government .
• June 20, 2010: Petr Nečas is officially elected third party chairman at the party congress with 87% of the delegate's votes.
• November 4, 2012: Petr Nečas is confirmed as party chairman with almost 59% of the delegate's votes against his challenger Ivan Fuksa .
• June 17, 2013: Petr Nečas resigns as head of government and party chairman. The first deputy chairman, Martin Kuba , provisionally takes over the party leadership. The ODS candidate Miroslava Němcová is passed over in the attempt to form a government by President Zeman, who instead appoints an expert government .
• 25./26. October 2013: The ODS receives its historically worst result in the early parliamentary elections with 7.72%.
• January 18, 2014: Petr Fiala is elected as the new chairman of the ODS.

Results of the elections to the House of Representatives

• 1992: 29.7%: 76 seats
• 1994: 29.6%: 68 seats
• 1998: 27.7%: 63 seats
• 2002: 24.5%: 58 seats
• 2006: 35.4%: 81 seats
• 2010: 22.2%: 53 seats
• 2013: 7.7%: 16 seats
• 2017: 11.32%: 25 seats

Web links

Commons : Občanská Demokratieická strana  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Website ODS

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ODS party executive committee, ods.cz, accessed on December 19, 2013
2. ^ Hans-Jörg Schmidt: Czech Republic. A neighborhood customer for Germans. 3rd edition, Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2010, p. 167.
3. ↑ Radio Praha ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on April 5, 2010) 
4. ↑ Radio Praha ( Memento of the original from December 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on November 5, 2012) 
5. ↑ Report on www.novinky.cz (Czech) (accessed on April 29, 2014)