Amendment changes rules for regional elections

Prague, June 25 (CTK) - Candidates in elections to Czech regional assemblies will only need 5 percent instead of the current 10 percent of preferential votes to be elected, under the amendment to the election laws signed by President Vaclav Klaus yesterday.

The legislation also reckons with a change to the borders of some constituencies for the Senate elections due to the change in the number of the local population, presidential spokesman Radim Ochvat has said.

"Now there is no obstacle to Klaus declaring the autumn elections," Ochvat said.

The regional and Senate elections may be held in October, he added.

Ochvat said due to the deadlines set by law, the former must be held on October 12-13 at the latest and the latter two weeks later.

The lowering of the limit of preferential votes for the regional elections is to unify the rules for the preferences at the list of candidates with the law on the Chamber of Deputies elections.

The changes in the area of the constituencies are needed so that in keeping with the constitution, every senator should represent roughly the same population number, which is now on average 130,034.

In five constituencies, the population number has exceeded the permitted 15-percent divergence and it was too low in another one.

Under the legislation, all official results of the elections are to be published in the Gazette of Laws, while this has been done in the paper Hospodarske noviny until now.