Final Word from Thursday, April 8, 2021

When Bohuslav Sobotka took over in June 2010 from Jiří Paroubek as head of ČSSD, the party had just won the 2010 parliamentary elections with 22.09% of the vote. When Sobotka resigned as chairman in June 2017 and turned the reins over to Milan Chovanec, ČSSD was well on its way to a 7.27% performance in the 2017 parliamentary elections. Under Sobotka's rule, ČSSD lost an average of 2.1 percentage points per year. Since Jan Hamáček took over from Chovanec in Feb. 2018, ČSSD has fallen to an average of 6.58% in the four most-recent major polls. That's a decline of 0.22 points per year. Hamáček certainly hasn't done wonders with ČSSD, but he did manage to slow down the precipitous decline brought on by the policies of Sobotka and his band of brothers in what we call ČSSD a.s. Hamáček's two main challengers to run ČSSD, Tomáš Petříček and Kateřina Valachová, now offer a return to the Sobotka era. With Hamáček, ČSSD at least has a fighting chance of staying in Parliament. [ Czech Republic acting temporary congress conference April 9-10 ]