Prague - Former Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg was elected Saturday chairman of a recently-established pro-European, fiscally-conservative Czech political party. The party, named TOP 09, has a realistic chance to win seats in the Czech Republic's parliament in a general election next year, according to recent surveys.
The surveys showed the party being backed by between 8 to 12 per cent, or above the 5-per-cent threshold required for entering the lower house.
The election, whose date is yet to be set, must take place before June 2010.
Schwarzenberg, 71, is a novice to high-level party politics. He previously earned political posts as a nominee of parties of which he was not a member.
In 2004, he won a Senate seat as a candidate for two now-defunct small centrist parties. The small centrist Greens nominated him to the top job at the foreign ministry in the previous centre-right three-party cabinet of ex-premier Mirek Topolanek.
TOP 09 was partially founded by former right-wing members of the country's Christian Democrats who left their former party over disagreements with its left-leaning wing.
Delegates elected former Christian Democratic leader and finance minister Miroslav Kalousek, 48, the party's first deputy chairman.
