Prague - The faction of the Green Party unanimously agreed Wednesday they want the coming presidential vote to be made public.

The reason for that is allegedly to prevent the possible political horse-trading deals and vote-buying tricks. According to the Greens, Czechs would then have a chance to see how individual MPs and senators voted.

"The video-recording of the secret meeting between the president´s chancellor Jiří Weigl and controversial advisor of ex-PM Miloš Zeman Miroslav Šlouf played a key role in going unanimously for the public ballot. Public ballot is the only way to prevent the dirty, non-transparent and suspicious vote horse-trading deals behind the scenes," says the freshly released statement of the Green Party.

Everything different a week ago

The Greens´ leader Martin Bursík, however, talked differently just a week ago. In an interview for Radio Impuls, a popular private station, he said secret ballot has a stronger mandate, because the voters do not have to follow the party lines and can vote according to their conscience.

It was the Social Democrats who have started to advocate the public vote. As Aktuálně.cz found out, some of the Social Democrats MPs and senators plan not to vote for Jan Švejnar but for Václav Klaus.

US-based economist Jan Švejnar was nominated by the Social Democratic Party and later fully supported by the Greens

Weigl - Šlouf case

On Monday February 4, Aktuálně.cz brought evidence of a secret meeting between the president's chancellor Jiří Weigl and controversial figure Miroslav Šlouf, a former communist official who used to be one of the most influential men in late 1990s, having contacts with the Czech mafia underworld.

The two men met at least twice in the Savoy Hotel in Prague - January 22 and 23. The meetings took just a few minutes and each of them left the hotel separately.

Aktuálně.cz reporters wanted to know why the president´s chancellor Jiří Weigl meets a man who is not secret about his contacts with the mafia underworld just a few days before the presidential election. Šlouf also confirmed in past he used to be a friend of a murdered mafia boss František Mrázek.

Czech police is to investigate the case they want to know who gave away the video-recordings which belong to the Savoy Hotel. 

Furious Topolánek

The new Greens´ tactics made Prime Minister Topolánek upset. He openly expressed his surprise and anger.

"I am taken aback Martin Bursík joins the lot of David Rath and Jiří Paroubek and advocates something that is not tenable," said Topolánek. 

"I believe the debate about the method of voting is about acting with dignity. It is actually a debate about Topolánek vs Paroubek, not about Klaus vs Švejnar," added Topolánek.

Nonetheless, the Christian Democrats (of the governing coalition) agree with the Greens to have public vote.

On top of that, the Parliament´s Election Committee seems to hold the same view. "The Committee adopted a resolution that the Parliament recommends public vote," stated Miroslav Vlček, the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies.