Final Word from Wednesday, September 25, 2002
The Greens were the big winners in the German elections, and their Czech counterparts are excited. The Czech Greens already doubled their share of the vote in the June elections to 2.36%, and they're hoping to maintain the momentum. Unlike in Germany, though, the Czech party has no Joschka Fischer. Few Czechs could name a Green politician, and Petr Jüptner of Charles University said the party hasn't been very visible. If it adopted an agenda similar to the one in Germany, he said, it could be successful. This would mean concentrating not just on the environment, but also on general market reform. Ecology itself, says political scientist Rudolf Kučera, isn't a significant political issue in the CR. If this changes, the Greens could one day, like their German counterparts, become a key potential coalition partner for the Social Democrats.