It is an election year here in the Czech Republic and the Czech people are still struggling with their newfound duties and democratic principles, but they are progressing.

In June of this year they had elections for Parliament. This is the major governing body of the country and consists of 200 members. Each political party that receives 5% or more during the vote is represented. This makes for some interesting political scheming and double-dealing in the final days leading to the election as well as after it.

In this year's June election the two major parties, ODS (Civic Democrats) and CSSD (Social Democrats) found themselves in what can only be called a Mexican Standoff. While ODS stole the thunder of the then reigning CSSD party and received the majority of the votes with 35.4% they did not receive enough to take a command of parliament having only 81 seats. Even if they were to make a coalition government with SZ (The Green Party) and KDU-CSL (Christian Democrats) who received 6.3% and 7.2% respectively or 6 and 13 seats, they are still short of a majority having only 100 seats. On the left end of the spectrum you have the somewhat reformed KSCM (Communist Party of Cechia and Moravia) received 12.8% of the vote, or 26 seats. CSSD, having received 32.3% of the votes controls 74 seats, which when combined with their traditional ally KSCM, also only gives them control 100 seats.

It's quite the conundrum as now nearly five months have passed and there is still no actual working government. There have been several attempts to form a coalition governement and even talks of a Grand Coalition, where the two major parties would agree to work together, but to no avail. The ideologies of each of the major parties are vastly different and many Czechs believe this will never happen and if it does it will be completely useless.

To complicate things Senate and municipal elections were also held this month. The Senate, some Czechs say, is just a waste of tax money as they have no real power in the government and many feel they should be disbanded. ODS has been holding a marked lead in the Senate for some time with 36 of the 81 seats since 2004, but that could all change this weekend.

The strange thing about the Senate race is it's a two round runoff. That is, this coming weekend which also marks the celebration of the first Czech Republic under T.G. Masaryk, 28 October 1918, they will have the second round of voting.

In the two-round system all candidates are voted for in the first round. If no candidate receives a large majority of the votes then in the next round the two highest vote-getting candidates have a runoff election and the supporters of the other candidates who did not make the runoff election must decide which of the two remaining candidates to vote for. The candidates are elected for a six-year term but one-third of the Senate is turned over every two years in elections. This month 27 seats are up for grabs in the Senate

So while voter turnout has been quite low many eyes are still turned to Prague to await the results of the often volatile and unpredictable Czech political scene. It is really all quite fascinating for me as the system is drastically different from what I was used to in America.

Part 1 of my two part article about The Velvet Revolution