Czechs will get new government but crisis lingers

PRAGUE, Sep 1 (Reuters) The Czech Republic will get a new government on Monday, three months after an inconclusive election, but the new team lacks parliamentary support and the political stalemate seems set to continue for weeks or months.

The central European country's President Vaclav Klaus said today he would name a rightist minority cabinet led by Mirek Topolanek, chief of the Civic Democrats who won the June polls.

Topolanek, a 50-year old former businessman, has said he wanted to rule only until an early election he would like to hold in the spring of next year.

But he lacks support for both his cabinet and the election plan in parliament, and seems likely to lose a confidence vote prescribed by the constitution within a month of appointment.

Klaus rejected to comment on Topolanek's frail chances.

''I will appoint this cabinet...as a normal cabinet with all it takes. Thoughts on how long it will function, if a week or four years, are beside this debate,'' he told reporters.

The Civic Democrats and other centre-right parties won 100 seats in the 200-seat lower house, exactly the same as the outgoing leftist Social Democrats and the far-left Communists.

The left refuses to back Topolanek and he can now rely merely on his own 81 deputies and possibly on support from the small Greens and abstention of the centrist Christian Democrats.

If he loses the confidence vote, Topolanek must resign.

Unless parties agree to call a new election, the president can dissolve parliament and call a new vote after three successive governments lose the initial confidence vote.

Outgoing Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek, whose Social Democrats came in second in the election, has said he wants the chance to form a government if Topolanek fails.

MONTHS TO GO Political analyst Petr Just said he expected the new EU member country would eventually limp to an early election. But it will take months to find an agreement on the polls and on forming a cabinet that will lead the country in the meantime.

''I think in the end politicians will realise what is going on and after all they will approve a law, even though belatedly, on shortening the election term,'' said Just, an associate professor at Charles University.

Topolanek said his cabinet would have nine Civic Democrat members and six independents.

Vlastimil Tlusty, father of the party's plan to introduce a flat tax, is expected to take the Finance Ministry and Alexandr Vondra, former ambassador to the United States, will likely take the Foreign Ministry.

The political stalemate has affected preparations of the 2007 budget, key for the country's plan to adopt the euro in 2010. The Civic Democrats have anyway preferred deep fiscal reforms to any commitment on the date of euro entry.

Topolanek said his cabinet would not set a euro entry target, and would focus on the 2007 budget, preparations for Czech EU presidency due in 2009 and arranging the election.

Reuters BDP DB1837