Czech Senate majority reaffirmed
October 18, 2014
The Czech Republic's governing three-party coalition ended up with 46 senators in the 81-member upper chamber, according to official preliminary results released Saturday.
At stake during run-off voting on Friday and Saturday had been a third of the mandates in the senate, 27 of its seats.
The three parties bagged 19 of them. The overall result fell short, however, of a three-fifths majority required for constitutional change.
Turnout at 16.7 percent was the lowest since Czech independence in 1993.
The three coalition parties had emerged from last year's snap election with 111 seats in the 200-seat lower house of parliament.
Setback for Sobotka's CSSD
The results contained, however, a setback for Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (pictured in center) and his left-wing social democratic CSSD party: Its senate seat-count fell from 41 to 33.
Its coalition partners, nonetheless, picked up seats to keep the coalition's majority in the senate.
The centrist populist ANO movement, created by billionaire Andrej Babis (left), won its first four seats in the senate. The Christian Democrats took five seats.
Among the opposition parties, the Civic Democrats and Greens each won two seats. The conservative TOP09 party failed to win any seats.
The senate can return legislation to the lower chamber. The senate can also keep the parliament running if the lower chamber is dissolved, which happened last year.
ipj/sb (Reuters, AFP, dpa)