A NUMBER of new parties look set to contest the Czech general election in late October. Most of them run personality-driven populist campaigns. But at least one campaign is driving a positive cause: a new party is seeking to organise politically the country’s Roma minority.

An estimated 250,000 Roma live the in the Czech Republic, but those numbers are notoriously difficult to verify as census takers often fail to canvas effectively Roma neighbourhoods. Up to 50% of the Roma population is believed to stay in segregated, poor quality apartments and temporary hotels. Unemployment and welfare dependency rates are high. The new party, the Roma Democratic Party (RDS), seems unlikely to reach the 5 % threshold that would qualify it for parliament. But its campaign could yet help to organise future attempts to gain seats on local and regional councils.

The economically depressed northern Bohemian region has been a particular flash point in recent years, with Roma violence, both real and imagined, prompting protests and clashes. Right-wing extremist movements have sought to sow the seeds of unrest. And as if social problems and living conditions were not troubled enough, ruthless real estate speculators capitalising on the state’s social-housing subsidies with cheap, dilapidated houses superficially spruced up, prompted the migration of Roma from bigger cities to smaller towns. These towns were ill-equipped to deal with the influx of people as budget cuts slashed welfare benefits. A post-industrial environment, global economic downturn, decades of neglect and the unnatural migration patterns made for a potent cocktail.

The RDS has been in the works since at least May of this year and officially gained recognition from the interior ministry in August. To form an official political party in the Czech Republic, founders must collect 1,000 verifiable signatures from supporters. The party’s leader, Miroslav Tancoš (pictured), who also led a civic group, the Czech-Romani Association, served as a liaison between police and the Roma community during periods of high tension in northern Bohemia. The RDS looks set to field candidates in most if not all of the country’s 14 regions.

This is not the first time Roma community leaders have attempted to form a political party. Mr Tancoš was the leader of the Roma Democratic and Social Party, which was founded in 2005. The party did not field candidates in general elections, but backed the larger Social Democratic Party (ČSSD). A court cancelled the Roma party’s official status in 2011, because allegedly as it had not filed the required financial reports. Divisions within the Roma community also derailed party organising efforts. In the last general election, in 2010, one Roma reached parliament representing the ČSSD. In the early 1990s, when political parties were in their infancy in the then Czechoslovakia, a handful of MPs from the Roma Civic Initiative served in parliament. In neighbouring Slovakia, the country’s first ever Roma MP took office last year.

Among the RDS’s leading priorities, according to Mr Tancoš, is Roma youth education. For years, the Council of Europe and other groups have criticised the Czech education system for disproportionately (and sometimes unnecessarily) diverting Roma children into special education classes, thus setting students behind their peers almost immediately—a setback from which it is difficult to recover. The RDS also professes a series of general left-of-centre priorities like caring for single mothers, pensioners and the sick. Mr Tancoš believes that state-owned firms, including forest-management companies and the like, could serve as vehicles to combat high Roma unemployment, even without hiring quota-systems. According to Mr Tancoš, the party received 2m Czech crowns ($105,000) in start-up funding from donors in the United Kingdom. He has thus declined to name the donors, but will have to make further information public as the campaign advances.

Divisions within the Czech Roma community have sidetracked efforts organise politically in the past. As social conditions and segregation deteriorate there is hope that this unfortunate common ground can, somewhat contradictorily, serve as a unifying force.