ČSSD deputy chair: Gov't coalition with KSČM impossible

Prague, March 4 (CTK) - A government coalition with Communists (KSCM) after next year's general election is unimaginable, Michal Hasek, first deputy chairman of the senior Czech opposition Social Democrats (CSSD), said in an interview for Monday's issue of daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD).

CSSD chairman Bohuslav Sobotka spoke similarly recently. He said the KSCM is very often being caught by its own past in personnel matters.

Hasek said as long as the Communists do not clearly cut off themselves from the past and delete things like an attack on private ownership from their programme, "any government coalition with the KSCM is unimaginable for me," Hasek said.

He said cooperation on highest political level would copy the developments in regions where the CSSD eventually reached agreement on cooperation with the KSCM, but now it must cope with big problems.

"...I refuse to solve scandals of the type where a deputy minister was an agent of the (secret police) StB. We can bring the Communists to the government neither by the main nor a side entrance," Hasek said.

He was referring to the problems of some regions in which the CSSD created coalitions with the KSCM that has aroused students' demonstrations. The situation has been aggravated when it was found out that some Communist councillors cooperated with the StB or other leading bodies of the party.

Hasek told MfD the CSSD will be competing for votes in the next general election precisely with the Communists and the Party of Citizens Rights of Milos Zeman (SPOZ).

"We will not be fighting with [the current government rightist parties] ODS or TOP 09. It is not normal that we won several past elections, but that we also lost many voters. We must try to give the people a reason to return to the CSSD," Hasek said.