Czech Failures Seen Aiding Left in Voting

Petr Bradac is one of the lucky few still working at Poldi Steel, a once-proud purveyor of specialty steels that gave the Soviet military some of its sharpest teeth.

But Poldi is in deep trouble. Bradac is worried. And in parliamentary voting Friday and today, the unhappy steelworker may help put a left-of-center government into power for the first time since the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” overturned Communist rule.

“Nothing is certain anymore,” complained the brawny Bradac, 30. “I could lose my job soon, and my apartment rent is going up. . . . I will vote for the Social Democrats.”

Just a few years ago, the Czech economy was growing rapidly, a newly privatized Poldi was winning Western customers, and this country appeared to have a golden touch in its transition from communism to a free-market democracy.

But the privatization of state-run Poldi--which employed 22,000 here at its peak--proved a failure, partly because relations between its new owner and the government dissolved into acrimony.

Today, 800 workers remain, keeping a tiny portion of the huge complex alive as a subsidiary of another steel firm.

Working-class Kladno seethes with frustration, a situation repeated in different ways in many towns and villages across the nation.

This widespread disappointment and anger, triggered by failures such as the collapse of Poldi and corruption in the country’s privatization process, led many to predict that the left will take power with this election.

Polls show that up to five mainstream parties may win parliamentary seats, with additional seats going to the Communists on the extreme left and the ultranationalist Republicans on the extreme right.

Most analysts expect the leftist Social Democrats to place first but fall far short of a majority, which means they would turn to other parties for the parliamentary support needed to form the next government. That could include tacit support from the Communists.

Polls show that nearly one-third of voters--the largest single bloc--support the Social Democrats.

“We are in a situation where the political right has disintegrated to some extent, and the left has consolidated its position and is prepared to take over,” said Jiri Pehe, an advisor to President Vaclav Havel--who constitutionally has an above-the-fray position.

Early results will come soon after the polls close this afternoon, but full official results will not be known until Sunday or Monday. Coalition-building to form the next government could then take days or even weeks.

Uncertainty Feared for Alliance Plans

Some here fear a lurch to the left could have unpredictable effects on this country’s hopes to join the European Union and its plans to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, even though the Social Democrats express strong support for both of those goals.

Since the 1989-90 collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, two of this country’s key neighbors--Poland and Hungary--have gone through changes of government from right to left and back to the right again. That experience, in the view of many here, has given them some degree of political maturity.

But in the Czech Republic, former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, leader of the strongest conservative party, the Civic Democrats, led the government from 1992 until late last year, when his ruling coalition collapsed and was replaced by the current caretaker center-right government. Economic growth, meanwhile, has plunged from its 1995 peak of 6%. The economy is now contracting at an annual rate of 1%.

Klaus’ government took major steps toward building a free-market economy, and its success shows in the new glitter of historic Prague, a booming business and tourism center whose centuries-old buildings are rapidly filling with fancy boutiques and modern office spaces.

But the countryside and smaller towns have been bypassed by the new prosperity of the big urban centers. And large segments of the public were soured by corruption in the Klaus government’s privatization program--especially the existence of legal loopholes that in many cases allowed new majority owners of former state-run firms to in effect steal from their own enterprises.

“I don’t trust anybody,” Karel Brabetz, a former Poldi employee who is now unemployed, complained over a beer in a Kladno pub. “On TV you always hear about stolen millions. Everything is extremely expensive. They tell us things will get better after the elections. But wait until July: Things will be worse. The only reasonable thing to do is jail everybody in the government. All of them steal.”

Mainstream Parties Face Added Difficulties

The existence of radically dissatisfied voters who form a base for the Communists and the Republicans adds to the difficulties faced by the mainstream parties.

Communist supporters “are old people who were humiliated by the new regime, and these people stick to the label ‘Communist’ because they do not want to reject their whole lives,” said Vaclav Zak, editor of Listy, a political journal. “The people leading the Communist Party know that if they respect the word ‘Communist’ they will get 10% of the vote.”

The Republicans are led by Miroslav Sladek, who spews anti-German and anti-NATO rhetoric and openly attacks this country’s minority of Roma, as the ethnic group known in the West as Gypsies prefers to be called.

A billboard along the 12 miles of highway leading from Prague to Kladno captures the flavor of Sladek’s politics: “Republicans AGAINST Preferential Treatment of Gypsies,” the sign declares, using the term the group dislikes. It also contains a huge photograph of Sladek.

Someone has defaced the advertisement, drawing a Hitler mustache on Sladek’s face and spray-painting the words: “No to Fascism.”

During World War II, nearly all the Roma people living in what is now the Czech Republic were killed in Hitler’s gas chambers. Those who live here now are mainly from families that survived the war in Slovakia, where Nazi extermination policies were different.

No mainstream party can allow either the Communists or the Republicans to join it in a formal coalition, because the taint of such action would mean self-destruction. Yet with the extremes of left and right expected to win about 20% of parliamentary seats, that leaves barely 80% of seats available for parties trying to form a working majority.

If the Social Democrats, which are led by Milos Zeman, place first, as many expect, their most likely coalition partners are the Pensioners for Secure Living--a group whose main platform is defense of pensions--and a more centrist party, the Christian Democrats.

If those three parties take a majority of seats, they could form a stable, left-leaning government. If they cannot command a majority, they might still form a minority government if the Communists quietly cooperate with them on key votes.

A “grand coalition” of the two leading parties--the Social Democrats and Klaus’ Civic Democrats--is not inconceivable. But it appears extremely unlikely in part because the two parties have demonized each other.

Klaus portrays the Social Democrats as threatening a return to the totalitarian past, while the Social Democrats portray Klaus’ government as a den of thieves.

President Havel, a former dissident who rose to power as a hero of the pro-democracy struggle, warned a few days ago that the country stands at “a profound crossroads” and that after the election politicians must somehow find a way to work together despite the bitterness of the campaign.

If the results are tight, Havel will play a key role in pushing for the needed compromises.

“The theme of this election is not a struggle between left and right,” Havel declared, saying that the “deeper dilemma [is] whether we shall become a civilized European democracy with a political culture capable of cooperation and dialogue, or whether we shall become a kind of banana republic, in which victory will go to all that is bad in petty Czech tradition: looking for conspiracies, for intrigues, for all that is unpleasant.”

He added: “What is at stake is a government . . . with the courage to look ahead.”