Zeman

Zeman is a Czech surname. Notable people with the surname include:

Miloš Zeman

Miloš Zeman (Czech pronunciation: [ˈmɪloʃ ˈzɛman]; born 28 September 1944) is the third and current President of the Czech Republic, in office since 8 March 2013. Previously he served as the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from 1998 to 2002. As leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party during the 1990s, he transformed it into one of the country's major parties. He was Chairman of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Czech parliament, from 1996 to 1998.

In January 2013, Zeman was elected as President of the Czech Republic. He is the first directly elected President in Czech history; both of his predecessors, Václav Havel and Václav Klaus, were elected by the Parliament.

Early years (Socialist Czechoslovakia)

Zeman was born in Kolín; his parents divorced when he was two years old and he was raised by his mother, who was a teacher. He studied at a high school in Kolín; from 1965 he studied at the University of Economics in Prague, graduating in 1969.

In 1968, during the Prague Spring, he became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia; however, he was expelled in 1970, owing to his differences with the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was dismissed from his job and spent more than ten years as an employee of the sports organisation Sportpropag (1971–84). From 1984, he worked in the company Agrodat. However, he was dismissed again in 1989, this time as a result of his critical article "Prognostika a přestavba" ("Forecasts and Reconstruction").