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Prague City Hall has decided to suspend the planned relocation of the Slav Epic from Moravský Krumlov to the capital until after this weekend’s municipal and senate elections, saying that the issue had become over-politicised. Moravský Krumlov welcomed the decision. Prague said that the next step would be to send a “polite letter” to officially ask when the paintings might be moved. Moravský Krumlov was fined 80.000 by a circuit court in Znojmo for preventing the move. The two cities have been in a heated row over Alphonse Mucha’s Art Nouveau masterpiece, which is a major tourist attraction for the small Moravian town, at least since the recent decision of the Znojmo court that they could be removed to Prague.

One of the Social Democrat ballot leaders in Prague, Miroslav Poche, will quit all party positions over tax evasion on his donation to the party. The daily Hospodářské noviny reported on Thursday that Mr Poche, who is the deputy chair of the Prague Social Democrats, donated 300,000 crowns to the party but split the sum to avoid taxation. The head of the Social Democrats in Prague, Petr Hulínský, said Mr Poche breached party principles and will have to step down. Social Democrat leaders are yet to decide whether he will be allowed to remain on the ballot for the upcoming local elections.

If general elections had been held in late September, the centre-right coalition of the Civic Democrats and the TOP 09 and Public Affairs parties would lose 13 out of its 188 seats in the lower house of the Czech Parliament, according to a new poll by the Factum Invenio agency released on Thursday. The opposition Social Democrats would win the elections with 56 seats in the 200-member Chamber of Deputies; the Civic Democrats would come second with 50 seats, followed by TOP 09 with 38. The Christian Democrats, who did not pass the 5-percent threshold in May’s elections, would gain nine seats on the lower house.

Some two and a half months after calls for curbing corruption changed the Czech political landscape, the Interior Ministry unveiled its anti-corruption strategy. But the long-awaited plan has been coldly received both in and out of the coalition, and the NGO watchdog Transparency International has even quit the ministry’s anti-corruption panel.

Some people may have thought it was a political blip that would soon lose its allure, but a relative newcomer on the Czech political scene, TOP 09, appears to be going from strength to strength. A recent poll suggests it has eclipsed the two traditional parties on the right and left and is now the people’s favorite.

According to a survey published by the STEM agency, Czechs are divided on the issue whether the newly formed government will bring greater stability to the country. While 48 percent of Czechs believe that the new center-right coalition will address the country’s problems long-term, 52 percent do not. Among those surveyed, people who had voted in the recent lower house elections tended to have a more positive view of the new government than those who had not.

Petra Paroubková, the wife of former Social Democrat leader Jiří Paroubek, who resigned after the party’s poor showing in May’s general elections, has revealed that she is working on a book of political memoirs focusing on behind the scenes practices in Czech politics. Mrs. Paroubková, who works as an interpreter, said on a popular talk show that many politicians, journalists and businessmen had a surprise in store. She admitted that she was writing the book partly for the money it would bring, and also because she felt the public had a right to know what goes on behind the scenes in Czech politics. The book is expected to come out in the early autumn.

Last month’s election saw more women than ever before elected to the Czech Republic’s Chamber of Deputies: 44 (some 22 percent of all MPs). The three centre-right parties holding talks on forming the next government have since put forward three women politicians – Miroslava Němcová, Kateřina Klasnová, and Vlasta Parkanová – for important posts: the speaker of the lower house, and deputy chairpersons, respectively. A little earlier I spoke to Michaela Appeltová of Forum 50 percent – an NGO aimed at promoting the role of women in politics, and asked

The lower house of the Czech Parliament has begun holding its first meeting since general elections at the end of May. One hundred and fourteen of the 200 elected to the Chamber of Deputies are new and were sworn in for the first time on Tuesday. The session was interrupted until Thursday morning, when MPs are expected to vote on the posts of chair and vice chair. Miroslava Němcová of the Civic Democrats is expected to become speaker, while there will be three deputy speakers, compared to five in the last parliament.

The Civic Democrats are currently in talks on forming a centre-right government with TOP 09 and Public Affairs, with the three parties holding 118 seats in the lower house between them. They say they aim to sign a coalition agreement by the end of the first week of July.

The acting leader of the centre-right Civic Democrats and man tipped to be the next prime minister, Petr Nečas, has been confirmed at the top of the party. What is more, votes for the other top party posts confounded expectations by delivering Mr. Nečas’ dream team.