Prime Minister
In the 2004 European election, ČSSD lost badly and the popularity of the party was low; this led to the resignation of Špidla on 26 July. Gross was appointed prime minister on 4 August 2004 and his government was approved on 24 August.
Gross was seen by his party as the last way to regain popularity and better handle future elections. This was proved wrong; in elections for regional assemblies and Senate elections, the Social Democrats failed again.
Gross claimed he would modernise the party on lines similar to those followed by Tony Blair, but his short time in office and constant involvement with scandals did not give him any time to implement changes. His popularity started to decline, and his involvement in further allegations of nepotism, police corruption, suspicious dealings in state privatisations accelerated the decline.
Read more about this topic: Stanislav Gross
Famous quotes related to prime minister:
“If one had to worry about one’s actions in respect of other people’s ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners, and, above all, a thick skin.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.”
—Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960)
“No woman in my time will be Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary—not the top jobs. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be Prime Minister. You have to give yourself 100%.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)