The KDU factor

Vladimír Špidla told Týden magazine that his goal is to bring honesty back to politics, so that a goverment agenda no longer becomes an instrument for overstepping the bounds and turning politics into wheeling-and-dealing and dirty business. He was talking about why he personally refuses to go into a cabinet with ODS. With KDU-ČSL, though, he'll have to overcome a similar risk. KDU is widely known as the greediest party and has already shown a disrespect for its partners. It forced ODA out of the Four Coalition, causing a 50% drop in the Coalition's rating, and it hurt some US-DEU candidates by underhandedly encour- aging "preferential" votes for its own candidates. Some analysts predict that KDU's greed will make it impossible to form a ČSSD-Coalition government. A ČSSD-ODS cabinet, perhaps without Špidla and Václav Klaus, can't be ruled out.