First, the very existence of such an agreement between government and opposition is unusual and appears to violate the constitutional role assigned to the opposition in a parliamentary system. During the Czechs previous democratic period, all major parties participated in a series of broad coalition governments, dividing between them the various ministries, and rendering the opposition minuscule and marginal. Second, President Havel has expressed fears that the agreement could lead to a permanent restriction of political pluralism and has urged that any constitutional changes be deliberate, and not merely expedient for the two parties involved. The CDP and CSDP, together, have a comfortable constitutional majority, increasing the probability of some sort of collusion. On the other hand, and despite these fears, Havel has also said that he favors a majoritarian electoral system for the parliament, or one with elements of a majoritarian system.
Smaller parties appear to be in for a hard time.
Uncertainties remain over the nature of the planned constitutional changes, and the program of the new CSDP government. The CSDP has published a preliminary program, which contains a lot of talk about the knowledge economy and ways of improving Czech educational standards. But it is unclear how this new Labourite talk will translate into practice. The danger is that CSDP will take a long time to work out a comprehensive program and not have the personnel or the political power to get much of it through in any case. Questions have also been raised by the makeup of Zeman s cabinet.