Brno - After a week of speculations and twelve hours of debating at Sunday's Green Party congress in Brno, the much talked about danger of the smallest coalition party leaving the cabinet just fizzled out like bubbles in a champagne glass.
Suggestion to leave the government was not even put to a vote in the end despite some of the rebels from the party's regional branches pushing for it initially.
READ MORE: Bursík under pressure. Green rebels want to quit govt
"It has been a long and lively debate. Nobody suggested we leave the coalition," said the party leader, Deputy Prime Minister Martin Bursík.
"One piece of advice to journalists: next time don't take such wild calls on their face value," he added. One of the recommendations the Green leadership sent to its critics inside the party was to engage more in a dialogue process within the party and leave the media out of the equation.
Bring our troops home!
The rebel call for more aggressivenes in advancing the Green Party program on the government level as well as greater assertiveness in pursuing the spoils of power like high management posts at various ministries and state companies also vanished into thin air.
One demand that did find its way into the final resolution is a call for the withdrawal of Czech troops from southern Iraq where they serve under the British command in Basra. The Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg will put this suggestion to his cabinet colleagues.
Czech soldiers stationed in Baghdad and serving under the NATO command can stay, as far as the Greens are concerned. Their primary role is to help train Iraqi security forces.
"The line of duty of our troops in Baghdad fits with the original idea for the mission, which was to help with the post-war reconstruction of Iraq. We do not approve however that 90 per cent of our troops are now mainly preoccupied with the protection of British military bases," reads the final declaration.
Kuchtová's departure
As for the successor of the first Green casualty in the government, Minister of Education Dana Kuchtová, who left the cabinet last week after being subjected to heavy criticism for the way she was dealing with European programmes preparation and "unprecedented pressure from politicians, including the Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek", the party congress expressed support for Kuchtová's first deputy at the ministry Dušan Lužný.
Bursík made it clear, however that the final decision will be taken by the party leadership after consultations with the parliamentary faction.
At the end of the much anticipated party congress the junior coalition member looked stronger and more unified than ever, the delegates were saying.
"That's just who we are, a fiery lot. We need to debate, that's how we came to be in the first place," said Jiří Roubík of the Olomouc regional branch, which was on the rebelling side, demanding that amends be made after the "easy" cabinet exit of Ms. Kuchtová.
