• Our programms
• Elections

Our party

30 March 1990: CPBM formed as a territorial organisation of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. 

 

October 1990: became an independent party at its 1st Congress and the successor of the former Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC)

 

Political programme

 

At its 5^th Congress in December 1999, the party adopted two major programmes, The CPBM at the Turn of the Millennium and a Programme of Renewal. The first outlines the party’s more long-term programme and aims, while the second contains its proposals for solving the economic, social and political crisis in which the Czech Republic finds itself fifteen years after the change of regime in November 1989 and the restoration of capitalism. Its proposals include calls for an appropriate degree of state ownership in key sectors of the economy (banking, transport, telecommunications, energy, the extractive industries etc.) and the development of a modern large-scale agriculture. 

 

The importance of winning the active support of the people for the party’s anti-crisis programme and their involvement in implementing it is stressed. To this end, the Congress also approved a popular ten-point summary of the CPBM’s proposals, called A Better Way for Our Country.

 

The party vigorously opposed the Czech Republic’s membership of NATO and its war of aggression against Yugoslavia. The Congress endorsed a policy of withdrawal from NATO, after an initial stage of suspension of membership.

 

While supporting the processes of European integration, the Congress declared its opposition to membership of the European Union in its present form.

 

As the programme adopted at the CPBM’s 6th Congress in May 2004, Hope for the Czech Republic represents a creative application of Marxism to the new economic, social, political and cultural conditions established since the restoration of capitalism during the 1990s. It is in fact the CPBM’s alternative economic and political strategy. It details the party’s main priorities, the first of which is job creation, fairer wages for Czech workers and protection of the country’s poor and at-risk groups.

 

The document is divided into five sections, dealing in turn with the economic steps which the party sees as fundamental to all other aspects of the programme, the CPBM’s environmental policy, the creation of an education- and information-based society accessible to all, international affairs, including the party’s perspective on the European Left, and the creation of a civil society and law-governed democratic state. It shares Marx’s view that ”philosophers have only interpreted the world, but the point is to change it.”    

 

At The CPBM´s 7th. Congress in May 17 and 18, 2008 in Hradec Kralove, there a Declaration on Socialism was adopted, stressing the social ownership of means of production as the economic basic of socialism, characterizing the socialist society as a society of free and equal citizens, socially just and economically prosperous, the basic aim of which is an all-round increase of the life quality of all the citizens, and an Appeal to the Radical Left of Europe stressing the necessity of Unity of Actions of the left.     

 

Election results

At the 2002 general election the CPBM won 18.5% of the vote – compared with 11% at the previous election in 1998. It increased its number of seats in the 200-member Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of the Parliament of the Czech Republic) from 24 to 41, making it the third strongest parliamentary party.  At the 2006 general elections the CPBM won 12,81% of the vote, losing 15 seats in the Parliament; the CPBM keeps now 26 seats (of a total 200). It is still the third strongest parliamentary party in the Czech Republic.

 

At the 2010 general election the CPBM won 11,27% of the vote, confirming its 26 seats (of a total 200). After this general election, the CPBM is the fourth strongest parliamentary party in the Czech Republic.

 

At the local election in November 2002 it had 5,699 local Councillors, 374 Mayors, 362 Deputies Mayors, 2 Lords Mayors and 3 Deputies Lords Mayors. At the local elections in October 2006 it had 4,268 local Councillors, 284 Mayors and 247 Deputies Mayors.

 

In the Senate election, held also 2002, it won 3 Senators (out of a total 81). In the Senate election held in 2004, it won 3 Senators (out of a total 81).

 

In the EP election in June 2004, it won 25% of the Czech Republic seats in EP. It has 6 members in EP.

 

In the EP election in June 2009, it won 14.18 %, what means 4 seats in the EP.  

 

Opinion polls

According to the public opinion polls on voting intentions, the CPBM is currently the third strongest party. Its public support has risen since the 2002 general election to 25.6 % in April 2005 then came down to 15% before 2006 general elections and to 13.5% in April 2009 respectively.

 

Membership

At present, the CPBM has 66 627 members in 4 039 branches (up to 1. 1. 2010).

In 2008 the CPBM had 75 000 members. In 2006 the CPBM had 82, 894, in 2005 the CPBM had 90,000 members (44% of them were women), compared with 100,781 in 2004, 136,516 in 1999, 142, 490 in 1998, 354,549 in 1992.

Membership dues for employed members are 0.5% of earnings. However, the approximate age of Party members is very high, about 70 years of age.

 

Party organisation

a)       Branches (4,039 in 2009, 4,691 in 2004, 4,456 in 2005 and 4,378 in 2006).

b)       District organisations, led by District Committees (86 in 2008), to which city and town committees are responsible

c)       Regional Councils (14, following the local government structure)

d)       Central organisation:

1.       National Congress (held once every four years). The last was held in May 2008, where each of the 276 delegates represented approx.300 members. 

2.       Central Committee: 93 members. 86 of them each represent a district organisation; they are nominated by pre-congress district conferences and confirmed by the National Congress.

3.       Executive Committee: 21 members, elected by the CPBM Central Committee.

4.       Leadership

·         Chair, elected directly by the Congress -  Vojtech FILIP.

·         4 vice-chairs, elected by the Central Committee: currently, Milan BICIK (responsible the Party's internal performing, the elections organisation and the local government policy), Stanislav GROSPIC (responsible for the party’s specialist groups), Miloslava VOSTRA (responsible for the party’s central financial management), and Jiri MASTALKA (responsible for the international policy and the European integration).

 

Party finances

The party is financed from the following sources: membership dues, donations from supporters, a state grant based on election results, and rental income from rooms in the Central Committee building.

 

Annual budgets have been prepared, to be based on the law on political parties.

 

Relations with other political organisations 

The party works closely with the Communist Union of Youth (KSM). Party members are active in a wide range of civic organisations: the Trade Union Association of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia (OSCMS), Left Women’s Clubs (LKZ), Clubs of the Czech Borderlands (KCP), Committee of National Culture (VNK), senior citizens' organisations etc.

 

The press

The daily Haló Noviny, bi-monthly (temporarily, to be changed in the future) Nase Alternativy (Our Alternatives) and local publications of the party’s district organisations are the main media carrying information on the party’s programme, policies and activities.

 

 

Internet web site

Address: www.kscm.cz

 

International links

The CPBM maintains contacts with more than a hundred communist, left and workers’ parties all over the world. Its closest partners include the Communist Party of Slovakia, the Communist Party of RF, the Communist Party of Greece,  AKEL (Cyprus), the Portuguese Communist Party, The Left in Germany, the French Communist Party, the Communist Party of Spain, the Party of Communist Refoundation (Italy), the  Party of Italian Communists, the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Communist Party of Cuba, the Communist Party of China, the Communist Party of Vietnam, the Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (M), the Japanese Communist Party, the South African Communist Party etc. There are also many local and regional contacts. Information and experiences are exchanged with these parties. The party receives no financial or material support from abroad.

 

Contact information:

  

a) Central Committee: UV KSCM, Politickych Veznu 9, 110 00 Prague 1,

    Czech Republic. Phone (switchboard): + 4202 22 89 71 11.

                                                           Fax: + 4202 22 89 72 07

                                                           e-mail info@kscm.cz     

 

b) The Head-lady of the CC’s Department of International Relations is:

Vera FLASAROVA (former MEP)  Phone: + 4202 22 89 74 28,

Fax: + 4202 22 89 74 49, e-mail leftnews@kscm.cz                                 

 

c) The Central Committee’s press spokesperson is Vera KARASOVA, who can be contacted at the Central Committee’s address (see above).