2013 Czech presidential election
election for President of the Czech Republic, held in January 2013
Presidential elections were held in the Czech Republic in January 2013, the country's first direct election for the presidency. No candidate received a majority of the votes in the first round on 11–12 January, so a second round runoff election was held on 25–26 January. Nine individuals secured enough signatures or support of parliamentarians to become official candidates for the office. Miloš Zeman of the Party of Civic Rights (SPOZ) and Karel Schwarzenberg of TOP 09 qualified for the second round, which was won by Zeman with 54.8% of the vote, compared to Schwarzenberg's 45.2%. Zeman assumed office in March 2013 after being sworn in.
Background
After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the adoption of a new constitution in 1992, the president was indirectly elected by a joint session of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Czech Republic. The possibility of a directly elected president was controversial because of concerns that it could weaken a government under the prime minister. The 2008 presidential election, which narrowly reelected Václav Klaus after several attempts, however was criticized for the appearance of political deal-making and allegations of corruption. Prime Minister Petr Nečas subsequently put the issue of a directly elected president in his three-party coalition agreement when he formed his government in 2010, in part because of demands by the TOP 09 party, and the Public Affairs and Mayors and Independents parties. Several outspoken opponents of the change however came from the Prime Minister's own Civic Democratic Party.
“2013 Czech presidential election” enters the record as election for President of the Czech Republic, held in January 2013. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Czech, presidential and election can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “2013 Czech presidential election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.