The 2018 Czech Republic Presidential Election is scheduled to be held on Jan 12-13,2018
If no candidate wins a majority, a Run-Of f Presidential Election between the top two candidates will be held on January 26-27, 2018
Voters will choose between 9 candidates who qualified for the election either by
- gathering 50,000 signatures from the public
- 10 signatures from Senators or
- 20 signatures from Members of the Chamber of Deputies (MPs)
Presidential Candidates
The incumbent president Milos Zeman is standing for re-election for a second and last term.
Other main candidates include -
- former President of the Czech Academy of Sciences Jiri Draho
- former Prime Minister Mirek Toplanek
- entrepreneur Michal Horacek and
- former ambassador Pavel Fischer
Three months after the election of the populist Eurosceptic and billionaire Andrej Babis as prime minister, Czechs will once again head to the polls on Friday Jan 12 and Saturday Jan 13 to elect a new president.
Since the split of Czechoslovakia 25 years ago, the presidency has become a somewhat ceremonial position with a limited but not insignificant scope of responsibilities that includes appointing high-ranking government positions and meeting foreign heads of state.
The president is also expected to advance the country’s political trajectory by toeing the line of policies of the elected parliament.
For many Czechs, the stakes are much higher. The election will serve as a barometer of the struggle for an identity for a nation that has increasingly moved away from progressive European integration and politics and towards nativism.
Standing against the traditional pro-western political establishment that has ruled in the Czech Republic in the early 1990s,Milos Zeman has repeatedly shunned EU refugee quotas and lent his support to Tomio Okamura, the anti-Islamic, anti-EU leader of the Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD) that came to power in October 2017
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