Czech presidential election, 2008
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Elections of the President of the Czech Republic by the Parliament of the Czech Republic were held on Friday 8 February and Saturday 9 February 2008, to select a successor to incumbent Václav Klaus' for a five-year term beginning on 7 March 2008. The candidates standing for election were Klaus and University of Michigan Professor Jan Švejnar.
When no winner emerged on the first ballot, another ballot was held on 15 February 2008, barely re-electing Klaus to a second term. The election was marked by party splits and post-Cold War rancor, Germany's Deutsche Welle reported. He signed his presidential pledge with a platinum-plated pen allegedly worth up to 1 million koruna (about US$61,300). A Czech company had donated the pen, one of a limited edition of 10, to Klaus, who promised he would exercise his powers cautiously and conservatively during his second term.
Each ballot can be composed of three rounds with gradually relaxing requirements for election. The differences of the 2008 election against the earlier ones were:
In the 2008 election, the President came of the 3rd round of the second election, in 2003 it took one election more.
Klaus was nominated for the second term by the 122 MPs and senators belonging to his Civic Democratic Party on 28 November 2007. Jan Švejnar, a US-based economist originally from the Czech Republic, stated he would announce in early December whether he will run against Klaus, with the support of former president Václav Havel, the Czech Social Democratic Party and the Green Party, as well as the caucuses of Association of Independent Lists (SNK) and the Open Democracy in the Senate of the Czech Republic which unite independent and liberal Senators from a range of small parties. The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia was considering supporting him, as well. Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People's Party (KDU–ČSL) were unable to unite on a candidate, and remained undecided even after holding talks with Klaus, but they support (together with the ČSSD and the Green Party) a constitutional amendment to have direct presidential elections instead (though such an amendment would only apply from the next election in 2013 onwards). Most analysts assumed that Klaus would win re-election.
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Wikipedia