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As the dust settles on the weekend’s local and Senate elections, one loser stands out: the smallest party in the coalition government, Public Affairs. Just five months after making a breakthrough in national elections, Public Affairs appears to have suffered an equally dramatic setback. We look at the party’s election debacle and prospects.

One of the biggest names in boxing history, Mike Tyson, was to have begun a five-day visit to the Czech capital on Tuesday. But in the end the former world heavyweight champion is not coming, after organisers had to call off the visit at the very last minute due to a lack of funds.

The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra will soon be under new management: specifically that of David Mareček, who the Ministry of Culture appointed to lead the orchestra on Monday. It is hoped that the youthful director of the Brno Philharmonic will bring new vigour to the post and especially an end to years of disputes between the orchestra and its management. Christian Falvey has the story.

The municipal and Senate elections that took place in the Czech Republic over the weekend have no clear winners – but they do have several losers. In the local elections, independent candidates won the most seats on municipal councils, while the coalition Civic Democrats suffered a serious setback, losing most big and medium-sized towns and cities, including the capital Prague. In the first round of voting for seats to a third of the Senate, 22 Social Democrat candidates made it to the second round, followed by 19 Civic Democrats.

Local elections and the first round of voting to a third of the upper house, the Senate, delivered a mixed bag of results over the weekend. Locally, the right wing Civic Democrats lost mastery of Prague to coalition partner TOP 09 and control of a series of other big cities, sometimes to the Social Democrats and sometimes to groups of citizens demanding change. Local factor often proved decisive in colouring the municipal map. In the Senate elections, the Social Democrats look well placed for the second round. Petr Just is a political analyst at

The past few weeks have seen commuters in Prague able to test – for the first time - the brand new 15T ForCity tram, designed by Škoda Transportation. The 15T, still undergoing trial runs, is boxier but arguably more refined than previous models, offering more room for passengers (up to 61 seated and 239 standing) as well as a slew of improvements. It is, for example, the first 100 percent low-floor tram in the Czech Republic) making it very user-friendly.

Major budget cuts are a mainstay of the coalition government’s platform but there is one post-election scenario that could present a major problem for them. The left-wing opposition Social Democrats hope to win at least 12 of the 27 Senate seats being contested in elections this and next weekend. If that happens, the party would gain a majority in the upper house – and make it very hard for the coalition to meet its planned budget deficit for next year.

Czechs around the country will be going to the polls on Friday and Saturday. Record numbers of candidates are running in elections for municipal councils, with one of the most interesting races expected in Prague: the Civic Democrats have dominated City Hall since the fall of communism, but could now lose for the first time. As well as choosing new local representatives, voters will also be deciding on 27 of the 81 seats in the Czech Senate. Radio Prague talked to political analyst Jiří Pehe about what is at stake in the weekend’s elections.

An environmental organisation this week launched an ambitious new proposal to increase greatly the amount of land in the Czech Republic given over to untamed nature. In fact, the Czech branch of Friends of the Earth wants to see a full 3 percent of the country covered in wilderness – ten times as much as now. I asked the group’s Vojtěch Kotecký why they were pushing for what would be a considerable change.

Prague City Hall held a special ceremony on Thursday honouring Czechs forced in the Stalinist 1950s to serve in army units that were in reality nothing more than labour camps. An estimated 40 to 60 thousand men, singled out as enemies of the regime, served in such units between the years 1950 and 1954, after which they were officially disbanded. But even 60 years later the scars remain.