Of the remaining seats two went to the centrist Christian Democrats and three to independents, the statistical office said. "It's a reality we can live with," Prime Minister Petr Necas, who is also the Civic Democrat chairman, told reporters after the second-round vote pitting the two most successful candidates in 27 districts.
"The Civic Democrats defended 18 mandates and the Social Democrats none... it was nearly a mission impossible," he added. The Social Democrats now have 41 seats in the upper house of parliament, which approves bills passed by the lower house before they are sent to the president to be signed into law.
However, if the Senate turns down a bill, it will return to the lower house - with a centre-right majority - and then go directly to the president. Still, the Social Democrats' victory allows them to slow down cabinet-sponsored cuts and reforms they describe as too harsh for low-income groups. The left-wingers can also halt any increases in Czech military participation in Nato-led missions abroad, including Afghanistan. "The legislative process will become longer and more difficult, but we have always said we are ready to negotiate key changes and reforms with the strongest opposition party," Necas said.
Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek added after the vote that the cabinet would now submit bills to the lower house "five weeks earlier" to offset the delay. The Social Democrats' acting chairman Bohuslav Sobotka said the Senate was now "welfare-oriented". "We are ready to discuss future reforms with the cabinet. The goal is to make them fair, balanced, socially more tolerable," he added.
The Civic Democrats now have 25 Senate seats, while TOP 09 and the centrist Christian Democrats have five each, and three senators are independent. The Communists, who hold the remaining two seats, are expected to vote with the Social Democrats against the government's reforms.
"The Communists will not vote for these laws. They can't support them because the asocial reforms are totally against our party's policy," Helena Briardova, a defeated Communist candidate, told AFP. A left-wing majority in the Senate may also thwart cabinet plans to boost Czech participation in Nato's Afghan war effort next year. The proposal to increase the number of Czech soldiers to 720 from the current 535 needs backing from a simple majority of senators under the constitution, which the left-wingers are unlikely to provide. The senatorial vote was this year's third major election in the former communist country of 10.5 million.
After a general election in May, the Civic Democrats teamed up with TOP 09 and centrist Public Affairs to form a coalition cabinet with a majority of 118 votes in the 200-seat lower house of parliament. But the Civic Democrats suffered a heavy blow in municipal elections last weekend when they lost their majority in the capital Prague and several other big cities.
The austerity cuts proposed by the government are designed primarily to put the country's public finances, battered by the global economic downturn and years of careless spending, back on track. The government expects to cut the public finance deficit to 4.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2011 and to 2.9 percent by 2013, from 5.3 percent expected this year and 5.9 percent in 2009. The austerity steps, including a 10-percent wage cut in the public sector, angered professionals who staged a huge rally in the streets of Prague last month, with 40,000 police, health staff, fire-fighters and teachers taking part. Voter turnout in the second round of the senatorial election reached 24.6 percent, following a high 44.59 percent in the first round, statisticians said.