[4] So if all the members of parliament were present a candidate would need 141 votes, from a combination of deputies and senators, in order to be elected in the third round.

[31] Zeman was a rival of the Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader Vladimír Špidla and Bureš was an attempted compromise candidate for the party.

[31][33] The final candidate in the election was Miroslav Kříženecký, a former military prosecutor, who was supported by the Communist Party.

[30] Reports before the election had Petr Pithart and Václav Klaus as the favourites for the election, due to disunity in the Social Democrats, with the Social Democrats and some Communists expected to support Pithart on the second round against Václav Klaus.

[36] Before the votes the outgoing President Václav Havel delivered a farewell speech for which he received a standing ovation, after urging legislators to follow their conscience.

[5] On the 18 January the Social Democrats nominated the former Prime Minister Miloš Zeman as their candidate in the next ballot.

[41] However Zeman was a rival of the Social Democrat leader and Prime Minister, Vladimír Špidla, and his election was seen as possibly furthering divisions in the party.

[41] Meanwhile, the 2 junior parties in the governing coalition, the Christian Democrats and the Freedom Union, nominated senator and former diplomat Jaroslava Moserová, who would have been the first female Czech president if she had won the election.

[43] Zeman was reported to have been opposed by some Social Democratic legislators in order to prevent him from getting into a position to challenge Prime Minister Špidla.

[46] The presidential term of Václav Havel finished on the 2 February, which meant that legislators had 30 days to elect a successor according to the constitution.

[48] Opinion polls showed the population strongly supported changing the constitution to allow the direct election of the president by popular vote, with political leaders indicating they would attempt to make this change if a third attempt to elect a president was unsuccessful.

[46] However the leader of the opposition Civic Democrats, Mirek Topolánek, restated his party's support for Václav Klaus on the 3 February and called for a new election date to be set.

[51] On the 19 February 2003 the 3 parties nominated Jan Sokol, the Dean of Charles University in Prague, who formerly had for a short time been education minister in a caretaker government.

[51] By the 25 February a total of 97 legislators from the governing coalition in the Chamber of Deputies signed a declaration to officially nominate Sokol.