Seniors call on pensioners to vote for Zeman

The Council of Seniors has called on pensioners to cast their votes for Miloš Zeman (Party of Citizens' Rights, SPOZ) in the second round of the first direct presidential election on 25-26 January.

Prague, Jan 17 (CTK) - The Czech Council of Seniors has called on pensioners to cast their votes for Milos Zeman (Party of Citizens' Rights, SPOZ) in the second round of the first direct presidential election on January 25-26, council chairman Zdenek Pernes informed CTK yesterday.

Zeman, 68, former Social Democrat prime minister, will compete for the post with Finance Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, 75, TOP 09 chairman. They advanced to the second round from the first in which nine candidates were running.

The seniors' call says Zeman has promised specific aid to old people and that "his programme of welfare state" is accommodating to them.

Schwarzenberg, on the contrary, is a member of the centre-right coalition government that has brought "much evil and suffering" to old-age pensioners.

The seniors' council associates some 320,000 members of old-age pensioners' organisations.

The council expressed satisfaction with that "senior-age personalities" advanced to the second round of the presidential election.

It said society has acknowledged "the prestige of the senior population."

The council said it respects Schwarzenberg, but that it cannot support him because he is deputy prime minister in the current government.

The ministers for Schwarzenberg's TOP 09 are responsible for "the systemic devastation of the quality of life of the senior population that is unprecedented in modern history," the council wrote in its call.

It is alluding to the finance, and labour and social affairs and health ministries, all headed by TOP 09 members, Miroslav Kalousek, Ludmila Muellerova and Leos Heger, respectively.

All ministries are responsible for the steps that the seniors criticise, such as raising retirement age without setting the maximal level, lowering pension indexation, higher fees for hospital stay and higher VAT.

Some 1.72 million people received an old-age pension in the 10.5 million Czech Republic at the end of the third quarter of last year. The average pension was 10,765 crowns compared with the average pay of 24,514 crowns.

($1=19.270 crowns)