Prague, Dec 19 (CTK) – The public Czech Television (CT) and Czech Radio (CRo) will broadcast short videos of the candidates for president from January 2 to January 10 and CRo will organise four duels between candidates and a broad debate shortly before the opening of the polling stations on January 12.
The first round of the direct presidential election is scheduled for January 12-13. If none of the nine candidates wins a majority in the first round, the two most successful ones will meet in a runoff two weeks later. The election’s favourites are current President Milos Zeman and Science Academy former head Jiri Drahos, but analysts say the situation may still change in the last two weeks before the vote.
Each candidate may send up to two versions of his 30 or 60 second video. The CT1 and CT2 channels will devote the total time of five hours to the broadcasting of the videos. The order in which the videos will follow will be defined by lot.
CRo will offer equal space to each of the candidates on its national stations Radiozurnal, Dvojka and Vltava on January 2-9. The audio messages of individual candidates can be up to 60 seconds long. If a second round of the election is held on January 26-27, the two candidates advancing to it will have one hour of the broadcasting for themselves on January 22-23.
The four duels of presidential candidates will be broadcast live on December 27-30.
The final debate of all the candidates, except for Zeman who refused to take part, will be held on January 12 from 12:30 to 13:59.
On January 2-11, CRo Radiozurnal plans to devote each day to one of the candidates.
CT wants to broadcast three election debates and a final debate on the eve of the first round.
The candidates for president are Zeman, Drahos, businessman Michal Horacek, former right-wing prime minister Mirek Topolanek, diplomat Pavel Fischer, doctor Marek Hilser, Skoda Auto car maker’s former chief Vratislav Kulhanek, arms official Jiri Hynek and musician Petr Hannig.
