Czech Republic: Same ole history (not ) repeating itself?

I shouldn’t be reading about Czech politics, should I? But, as ever, I couldn’t turn down the offer of free review copy and a long deadline from a journal, so I have been doing precisely that. The book in question is Kapitoly z dějin české demokracie po roce 1989 (Prague, Paseka, 2008) edited by Adéla Gjuričová and Michal Kopeček of Prague’s Institute for Contemporary History (USD). This collection brings together by younger researcher associated with the USD and various Western specialists on Czech politics and society. The idea of publishing the collection is to move the sub-discipline of ‘contemporary history’ beyond its original German and East European rationale as a means of ‘coming to terms’ with the totalitarian past toward. More recent political events in the Czech Republic need unravelling using a historian’s skills the editors argue.

The book divides into three loose thematic sections: the origins of the post-1989 Czech political system; Czech culture’s reflection of post-communist transformation; and the place the Czech experience into a broader Central European region. Despite its title, which loosely translates as Aspects of Czech Democracy After 1989 the book’s unifying theme is less democracy than the Czech national identity, the Czech transition from communism and the way the historical past has impinged upon contemporary politics and society.

The collection begins with a discussion of Václav Havel’s career as between 1969 and 1992 by Jiří Suk. Havel was, Suk argues, both a central actor and a key unifying figure in Charter 77, whose dissident writings and limited success in realizing his goals as President highlight the limitations of morally based anti-political ideas, which deny or downplay the need conventional democratic institutions such as political parties. As author of a magisterial history of the Velvet Revolution, Suk ably documents the political events decline and fall of Czechoslovakia’s communist regime, the emergence of the Civic Forum movement and Havel’s early role as President.

The collection begins with a discussion of Václav Havel’s career between 1969 and 1992 by Jiří Suk. As author of a magisterial prize-winning history of the Velvet Revolution, Suk ably documents the decline and fall of Czechoslovakia’s communist regime, the emergence of the Civic Forum movement in November 1989 and the broader transitional power structures of 1980-90; and the new president’s place within them. However, like many similar English language treatments of Havel, Suk’s attempt to use the playwright-president as an emblematic figure encapsulating recent Czech political history is not wholly successful. Ultimately, his essay offers a rather familiar account which reduces the rich palette of anti-political, pre-political and political positions held by Havel and other dissidents to intellectual blueprint for the Civic Forum movement and catch-all explanation of their failure in political office after 1989. The omission of Havel’s record as President of the independent Czech Republic - his eloquent, but quixotic promotion of civil society in 1990s; his diagnosis Czech society’s ‘foul mood’; the condemnation on ‘mafia capitalism’; the Rudolfinum speech blasting the Klaus government in 1997 - also give the essay an oddly partial feel.

Magdalena Hadjiisky’s exploration of the emergence of the centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS) from disintegration of the Forum movement in 1990-1 offers more original insights. In her case studies of provincial Civic Forum organizations in Brno and Ostrava, she show that, in addition to the demands of a ‘right-wing’ coalition of grassroots anti-communists, frustrated Forum officials and ordinary Czechs sceptical of ex-dissidents claims to leadership on the basis of dissident activism in 1970s and 1980s, spontaneous pressures for more hierarchical party-like structures also existed. The question has to be asked, however, just when Dr Hadjiisky is going to publish her excellent research on Civic Forum - scattered in various articles and papers in Czech, English and French and a several years old doctoral theses. Are French academic publishers really so obtuse?

Similar tensions are also identified by Deanna Colley in her study of the Czech student movement in 1989-80. However, Czech students’ organizations suffered the additional problem of reconciling their role as an interest group with loftier images of themselves as ‘guarantors of the Revolution’. As James Krapfl notes in his novel essay relating rival political narratives of revolution of 1989-90 to archetypical literary genres shows, such mythologization was ubiquitous in the politics of the time.

Perhaps the most original element in the book is its discussion of reactions to post-communist transformation in Czech cinema, fiction, and popular culture after 1989. Interestingly, these are generally at odds with prevalent mainstream political discourses of essentially successful reform process. Despite the diversity of authors and genres in Czech literature since the fall of communism, Alena Fialová finds several common motifs in their treatment of political and social change: the Revolution of November 1989 as a time of political innocence, altruism and idealism, but it is invariably followed by fictional protagonists’ disappointment. The ‘turning of coats’ by former communists, who emerge as the real winners of the transformation process in everyday life, is another a stock theme. Works of pulp fiction, perhaps unsurprisingly, take such populist constructions to extremes, depicting both ex-dissidents and ex-communists as creatures of corrupt and shady political system with their roots in the Communist period. More literary authors, by contrast, stress the corrupting effect of money, power and consumerism and the moral and ethical dilemmas that flow from these.

Petra Dominková finds a similar preoccupation with the negative or ambiguous impacts of transformation in Czech cinema after 1989. Many Czech films take as their protagonists archetypical ‘Little Czechs’, whose provincialism and lack of sophistication leaves them struggling (sometimes comically) to cope with the opening of Czech society to the wider world and the demands of the market economy. Germans and Western foreigners are also generally presented as somewhat overbearing and unwelcome outsiders Despite some recent films exploring the harsh experiences of Czech Roma, minority groups are often depicted either stereotypically or not at all. Martin Franc’s study of ‘Ostalgia’ in the Czech Republic seeks to extend this perspective by examining how attitudes to the former regime are refracted through popular culture and patterns of consumption. However, despite an engaging discussion of the re-emergence of ‘normalization’ era detective series and soap operas, 80s pop music and utilitarian ex-socialists brands on Czech TVs and supermarkets, in practice, it seems difficult to distinguish a specific post-communist Ostalgia from nostalgia generally or work out where Ostalgia or commercial imperatives for cheap mass market TV.

Only three essays discuss contemporary aspects of Czech politics after the Velvet Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Hana Havelkova’s chapter on Czech feminism after 1989 gives an interesting overview of women’s organizations in the Czech Republic and provocatively argues that the much maligned Union of Women (SŽ), which dates from the communist period, has in fact genuine roots in small town and rural Czech society. The Communists, she notes, amalgamated but then rapidly dismantled Czechoslovakia's once extensive mass women's organizations after taking power in 1948. SŽ, she claims, was created as a result of societal and intellectual pressures in the Prague Spring. Sadly, however, we don't hear much more of this as the chapter is rapidly sidetracked by a terminological discussion about whether women's and feminist organizations are or are not a social movement. Vladimír Handl examines the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), an electorally important, if isolated, force in Czech politics and a highly unusual example in Central Europe of an orthodox communist party with mass support. Handl‘s presentation of his own reseach and a effective and thorough synthesis of Czech, English and German literatures, skillfully tracks the party‘s development from 1990, rightly pinpointing how EU membership and the gradual shrinkage of its ageing support base represent both a danger and an opportunity for the KSČM. Adéla Gjuričová’s discussion of the centre-right Civic Democratic Party’s turn in late 1990s from Thatcherite neo-liberalism to historic Czech nationalist themes is also empirically rich. However, she is less thorough than Handl and misses opportunities for a wider comparative and/or historical perspective on the party founded by Václav Klaus are missed. Klaus’s reflections on Czech statehood, nationalism and national identity as early 1992-3, as well his more recent writings as President on immigration, multi-culturalism and civic and national cohesion clearly merit examination. ODS’s ‘national turn’ of the late 1990s also needs to be set in comparative context alongside the ‘nationalization’ of liberal forces elsewhere in CEE. The experience of Hungary’s Fidesz is an obvious point of contrast. Looser parallels might also be drawn with earlier episodes in Czech history such the national liberalism of 19^th century ‘Young Czechs’.

The issue of ‘liberal nationalism’ is addressed head on by Michal Kopeček. Surveys both dissident and academic writings on liberal nationalism in Central Europe, he argues that, although crosscut by nationalism, liberalism the region was historically stronger than is often assumed. Somewhat surprisingly overlooking the (neo-)liberalism of the Civic Democrats and their efforts to crafts a new form of ‘national liberalism’ he argues that despite the weakness of Czech liberal centrist parties after 1989, dissident historians’ debates of 1970s and 1980s firmly established a liberal nationalist consensus in Czech political life, which draws its strength precisely on the unresolved and conflictual nature of debates on Czech history and identity. However, he suggests, this consensus was too weak to block legalistic forms of ‘coming to terms with the past’ such as the Czech lustration law, leading to polarized and formulaic public debates on communism and unwelcome attempts by the state to act as guardian of ‘national memory’. The USD is the process of being swallowed up into a new Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and both the intellectual position sketched in this chapter and the introduction’s call for a contemporary history going beyond the study of totalitarian regimes seem a critical response to this.

A somewhat different perspective is offered in the book’s concluding chapter by Jiří Přibáň. Přibáň argues that the law always encapsulates and shape the collective and national memories, which underpin and legitimize both current institutions. Contrasting decisions by Constitutional Courts in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, he argues, that strict doctrines of legal continuity, which block retroactive decommunization laws, in the name of maintaining rule of law may be misconceived. Concepts of retribution are, he notes, an element in most systems of criminal justice. The notion of political discontinuity inherent the notions of 1989 as a democratic revolution, he suggests, can legitimately be accompanied by the principle of legal discontinuity of retroactive decommunization laws intended to enact historical justice and protect democracy.

The parallel theme of neo-liberalism and economic nationalism also emerges in Martin Myant’s discussion of the Czech capitalism after 1989. In the early 1990s politicians across the political spectrum were in thrall to historical stereotypes of the Czech industrial and entrepreneurial tradition. This led both neo-liberals and social democratic visions of distinct ‘Czech capitalism’ with limited foreign ownership. Only as these ideas went out of fashion, as the costs of flawed coupon privatization and asset sales to dubious would-be Czech captains of industry became apparent did a distinct Czech model of capitalism emerge. This, Myant notes, was a complex combination of liberal and social market elements which defied easy comparative classification with roots in the Czech Republic’s fine political balance between left and,

I am sympathetic to editors’ call for a more professional and thoroughgoing research into more recent Czech political history. Although making great strides recently, Czech political science has occasionally been characterized by certain shallowness of empirical research. The genre of political history and political biography as they exist in the English speaking world seem wholly absent in the Czech Republic. Although his collected works and correspondence have come out, the only full length biography of Václav Havel, for example, is John Keane’s distinctly flawed Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts (see Kieran William’s caustic review here).

Kapitoly z dějin české demokracie, however, falls somewhat short of its editors’ ambitions to use contemporary history to break new ground and open up new perspectives in other disciplines. Much of the collection reflects Czech contemporary historians’ well established interests in the Velvet Revolution and the transition from communism. Despite reference to political science literatures, many contributions are essentially rather traditionally constructed pieces of historical writing lacking any real element of interdisciplinary synthesis. The collection succeeds, however, in bringing together a range high quality scholarship in a single, well researched volume, and, as such, deserves to pull in broad Czech-speaking readership interested in current politics and society in the Czech Republic and fed up of the superficial and partisan found in most Czech language books on contemporary politics.

The Prague Spring: Many happy returns?

Yesterday I took myself off to Notting Hill yesterday to hear Dr Oldřich Tůma, head of the Czech Republic‘s excellent Institute for Contemporary History, talk on ‘The Prague Spring After 40 Years: Anti-Communist Revolution Or Campaign To Reform Communism?’. One of my colleagues, used to events at the Polish embassy, was surprised I wasn’t wearing a tie, but the Czech Embassy is a fairly down-to-earth kind of place, which rather nicely sums up the country it represents. I wandered out onto a terrace before the lecture to look a plaque expecting to read about some profound historical event only to be confronted with a Monty Pythonesque inscription about how Jára Cimrman - a Zelig like non-existent national hero made up by two humorists, who enjoys cult like status in the CR - had invented the light bulb. Let’s hope he also makes a contribution to the Czech Presidency of the EU

Dr Tůma hadn’t been feeling too well earlier in the day, apparently, but he quickly got into his stride and his presentation wasclear, well thought out and - as you would expect of a leading Czech historian - sprinkled with interesting and subtle interpretations. It was, I thought, however, a slightly safe view of the reform process, the answer to the question posed in the lecture title was that the Prague Spring was both a top-down communist attempt to revitalize one party rule with little (or limited) democratic content and a slow but gathering emancipation of Czech society trying to ease itself out from under the communist system - a ‘refolution’ with pressure from below and cautiously (mis-)engineered change from above, to borrow the phrase Timothy Garton Ash coined for 1989.

The 1968-89 parallel, Tůma suggested, was to be found in type of strategies employed by reform communist elites. He also noted that political change was - as seems typical for the Czech lands - framed in terms of ‘return’: reform communist wanted a return to 1948; socialists and radical communist reformers to the semi-pluralist managed People’s Democracy of 1945-8; and non-communist Czechs to an idealized chocolate box version of interwar Czechoslovak democracy. And on 1 January 1990 Václav Havel famously proclaimed ‘People, your government has returned to you’ and post-communist change was framed as a Return to Europe, or - if you like consuming the propaganda of the Czech right to the rich man’s club of the OECD. Like bored kids on a long car journey, Czechs are perhaps now entitled to ask ‘Have we got there yet?’ (I think the answer is yes).

The Q and A brought one important and well made criticism: a key omission in Tůma’s talk, the questioner noted, was the ubiquity of socialism. It had dominated the experience and perception of events at the time. There was little evidence that Czech society was consciously or distinctly looking back to a different point of reference, than reforming the regime. Socialism then still had significant support and legitimacy in the Czech working class. I lack the historical expertise to judge this one, but I suspect this point - basically a critique of views, which view 1968 in the hindsight of 1989 - is well observed. Czech thinking about 1968 seems to have a real blind spot here, perhaps because, at bottom, Czechs are still thinking through and coming to terms with their society’s relationship with communism and socialism. Much easier then to juxtapose an essentially non-communist society - expressing underlying national democratic tradition - with the reforming, but basically separate, communist regime and Communist Party.

When Czechs talk about 1968 they are always really thinking and talking about themselves and their society as it is and where it is going now. This rather contrasts with the profusion of flatulent retrospectives about the Western 1968‘. It occurred to me as my mind wandered a bit that if some people needed reminding that in 1968, socialism was (on) the agenda - at least in Czechoslovakia - others need reminding the left-libertarian agenda that burst forth then are either on the historical scrapheap or firmly entrenched in the mainstream. Why does there have to be endless series backward-looking intellectual nostalgiafests? I suppose because of the cultural power of a baby boomer generation of soon-to-retire academics and journalists, for whom 1968 was a never-to-be-forgotten golden moment Maybe in ten or fifteen years time, when the participants have finally moved on, 1968 will simply be studied as history. You know you’re getting middle aged when you start to agree with Timothy Garton Ash, but I can’t help thinking he was right to point out that 1968 and the May events was a merely historical hiccup compared with 1989 and that it was all, basically, a staging post to our current mainstream mix of social and economic liberalism.

Meanwhile back at the Czech Embassy, the Q and A at also revealed that Russian archives concerns the August 1968 invasion - bar a few carefully selected morsels - are largely still classified and inaccessible (a mixture of grinding post-Soviet bureaucracy and lack of political will) and that, while Czech and Slovak experiences of reform communism (and the communist regime generally) were rather different, Czech and Slovak historiography approaches 1968 in broadly similar ways. Vive la refolution!

Estonia's many shades of Green

My SSEES colleague Allan Sikk gives a seminar at the Sussex European Institute about Estonia’s Green Party, currently the strongest in Central and Eastern Europe having broken into the country’s parliament in the last elections with something over 7% of the vote. As elsewhere in the region, they have roots in the anti-communist dissident protest movements, which in the Estonian case means a certain (historically) nationalist tinge and a total lack of support from Russophone voters (perhaps, however a consequence of insufficient resources to mount a bilingual campaign Allan thought). In the Czech case, it means anti-communism and an inclination to work with the right, although recently the half a dozen Czech Green MPs have fallen out amongst themselves and some are looking to work with the Social Democrats. Quite how there can be ‘problems of communication with the leadership’ in a group of six, I’m not sure.

Despite some modest claims to have co-written the research paper the talk is based upon at short notice just before this year’s BASEES conference, it’s an impressive thorough and scrupulous presentation, which cleverly interweaves election survey, ecological analysis and more qualitative and historical insights to raise some bigger issues about the possible (re-)emergence of Green parties in the region. As quickly emerged - despite a propensity to attract better educated voters - there is no real evidence of Estonian Greens representing the first shoots of growth in post-materialist values based on a post-industrial economy despite high growth the emergence of a middle class of sorts. Instead of this sociological story - one that arguably even distorts our understanding of Green parties in the West - I (having spent too much time reading Charles Ragin on ‘configurational causation’) wondered if we had to look to a mix of factors coming together in certain cases: environmental and/or agrarian interest with the demand for ‘new politics’ of the centre, best delivered through a known and trusted political brand. In this perspective, the Green label is just a kind of franchise taken up by a rather diverse group of political business partners. Not necessarily totally meaningless, but not really indicative of a close ‘party family’ relationship.

Of parties, populism and partocracy

Slovak political scientist Miroslav Kusý writes a commentary about ‘partocracy’ in Slovakia in the liberal daily Sme. This theme, once a favourite uniting ex-dissidents, liberals and anti-political populists with a more rough hewn character, has receded from academic and intellectual debate in the past few years in favour of a slightly different take on the problem of (supposedly) defective and sub-standard democracy in CEE: populism a.k.a. ‘the populist backlash’.

Kusý’s definition of ‘partocracy’ is a fairly straightforward one: party government carried out for not the people but for parties- i.e. parties failing in their tasks of representing and aggregating the popular will (or some portion of it). A principal-agent problem, as we call it in the trade. Then, however, we descend into partisanship. The current coalition led by Robert Fico's populist-cum-social democrat party Smer Kusý says is an example of partocracy because it lacks ideologically common position with its smaller nationalist coalition allies and is united with them by a thirst for office, as (supposedly) proved by various scandals.

Kusy also cites a recent article in the Czech intellectual weekly Literární noviny by Czech political scientist and ex-Havel advisor Jiří Pehe who regrets that parties have given up on ‘their traditional role of forces in society’ (and, yes, the language original Czech really does have that odd echo of the Communist Party’s ‘leading role’) but are instead (shock horror!) reacting to public opinion ‘to appeal to the largest possible number of people’. (Pehe’s piece is a rather dull piece retreading the Czech ‘party versus civil society’ Klaus-Havel debate of the 1990s, arguing that social modernization makes parties less necessary and a political role for NGOs, citizens and intellectuals more necessary).

Kusý himself laments the ‘vulgar vocabulary, party polemics instead of civilized dialogue, and insults instead of substantive argument’. Alas, as argument about democracy or explanation of developments in either contemporary Slovak (or Czech) politics none of this really washes. It’s hard to think of any concept of party competition by big parties that doesn’t involve appealing to large numbers of voters or many established democracies, where party political communication takes place at the level of an academic seminar without a dose of knockabout polemics. Pehe’s assertion that Western political parties have opened themselves up to civil society seems fairly questionable- who can he have in mind? Possibly Greens in a very early stage of development? And political polarization - contrary to what he seems to think - as often or not tends to increase political participation and the increase in turnout at the last Czech elections showed.

The argument in Sme about ‘partocracy’ is also pretty lame. Ad hoc, unprincipled coalitions do not add up to ‘partocracy’. The term was widely applied to clientelistic party systems with an element of cosy consensus between governing parties say as those of post-war Italy or Austria, but has an intellectual heritage going back the early 20^th century. In a CEE context one of thinks of critiques of interwar Czechoslovak democracy, both in 1920s and 30s and in more exaggerated form after 1945 (Evard Beneš’s Democracy Today and Tomorrow - Beneš being one of the few political scientists ever to become head of state. He wrote a thesis about political parties in 1913. Woodrow Wilson comes to mind as another President-politolog). Havel’s writings both as dissident and President take up this tradition: his elegantly written fulmination against party government in his 1991 set of essays Summer Meditations, although not unprescient, was striking for the fact that it came when Czech parties had barely formed.

As conventionally used ‘partocracy’ refers not just to a vaguely defined lack of principle in coalition-making but to politicization of the state and/or party penetration of civil society by client-patron networks and a failure of representation. Both (especially the first) are problems in contemporary CEE, but the Sme article entirely bypasses these issues. More to the point, however, love it or hate, Fico’s rationale for forming a coalition with nationalist parties does have a pretty clear programmatic logic: the nationalist HZDS and SNS did after all his more statist (ahem, ‘social-democratic’) economic policies. A pragmatic power seeking logic of the kind the Kusý piece envisages probably would have led to the politically less costly option of a coalition of Smer with some outgoing parties of the right or centre. As for a failure of representation, Smer’s high opinion poll ratings suggests that such principal-agent problems are not bugging the median Slovak voter, whom seems to feel represented rather well.

All in the all, the problem seems to be that Slovak liberal commentators don’t like Smer and their Czech equivalents dislike both major parties of left and right. I think I share these dislikes, But they would probably do well to set out why, rather than dressing things up as a unique crisis of post-communist democracy complete with ill fitting notions of ‘partocracy’.

Ask a silly question....

The Czech Republic’s Centre for Public Opinion Research issues a regular series of press releases on its findings (all in Czech), which often find their way pretty much unedited into the Czech press. Some are, however, more informative than others: recent CVVM research tells us that, shock horror, many Czechs don't like with democracy.

Indeed, headline grabbingly 32% want (or tend to want) the abolition of political parties and the dissolution of parliament; 24% think they would be better off under an (unspecified) non-democratic regime and another 22% think authoritarianism would be allowable in certain circumstances (which we don’t know because this quanaitaive polling); 14% would like a return to Communist one party rule, with 1% more wanting a authoritaran rule who makes quick decisions. In keeping the Czech army traditionally apolitical role and lack of social prestige, however, only one percent want a military dictatorship.

At this point the traditional anguished response would be to say what shallow roots democracy has in the CR, how exaggrated its democratic tradition is etc etc… However, the polling is frankly meaningless, as no such alternative regime choices or party-less democracy is on the agenda and most respondent obviously knew it. A mere 9% thought it likely that parties and partliament would be wound up in the next five years and only 1 per cent though one-party rule or dictatsorship would return. In other words the responses are simply an expression of frustration and general pissed-off-ness pretty much common to all democracies. Predictably, it is the poor, old, less educated and Communist Party voters who are most ‘undemocratic’ in their views.

In other, slightly more meaningful polling CVVM measures Czech attitudes towards foreigners and tolerance towards minority and disadvanatged groups. Most Czechs, quite sensibly do not want to live next door to alcholics or drug users, people with a criminal record or mental illnesses. Gays are the next least favoured group of potential neighbours (29%) followed by black people (26%), although dislike of gays next door has dropped sharply from 42% in 2003. Tellingly, Roma do not seem have been mentioned in the survey, but the suspicion must be that they would the poll pretty high up the Czech list of undesirables.

Czech views on foreigners living in the CR are stable and lukewarm to hostile. Public opinion on allowing foreigners to saettle the country have softened slightly over the past five years, but are evenly divided, but - as five years – the overwhelming majority (68%) want immigrants if they come to adapt to Czech customs not ‘partly’ but ‘as much as possible’. Interestingly, a clear majority are against (49%: 37%) are against favouring EU citizens over other foreigners, although this a little more welcoming to fellow EU-ropeans than in 2003. Most – in the best West European traditions – see immigrants as a threat to local workers and what them restricted to shortage professions or barred from working in areas of high unemployment.

Czech Social Democrats warn of reform shock

The Czech Social Democrats have built on the success of their hard-hitting, negative 2006 parliamentary election campaign - which saw them return from the political dead to run the right very close - with some equally tough advertising in the run-up to this year's Czech regional elections. The theme, that old but always effective chestnut, that the government is clobbering grandmothers, chidren and the socially vulnerable. The stress focus is on new charges brought in for visiting the doctor (actually rather symbolic), higher charges for prescriptions and the cutting back of universal child benefits. The slogan ODSouzení k reformě! means Condemned to Reform, but is a play on the words stressing the misdeeds of governing Civic Democrats (ODS). It worked in 2006 and a very similar campaign enable Poland's Catholic-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) to overhaul the liberal Civic Platform in 2005 - before handing them a landslide in 2007 by running a thoroughly maladroit government with some distinctly dodgy junior coalition partners. The Czech regions, which run hospitals and secondary education, are currently dominated by the right, which has always tended to do better in regional elections, possibly as the Social Democrats don't have the same level of organizational implantation locally, or the same numbers of loyal voters willing to turn out for less important 'second order' elections. They currently lead in the national polls, however, and have gone negative early, so don't bet against them.

Czechs ponder armed anti-communist resistance, but duck bigger issues

Czech daily Lidové noviny carries an interesting exchange of views on the case of the Mašin brothers, Josef and Ctírad, who (in common with a few other isolated groups) waged a small scale armed resistance against Czechoslovakia's communist regime in early 1950s before escaping via East Germany to West Berlin in 1953, shooting their way out of trouble in a series of hair’s breadth escapes. A third member of their group, Milan Paumer escaped with them. Others fleeing with them - or associated with them in Czechoslovakia - were captured and executed. There have been various books of varying quality published in Czech, German and English, unravelling the story. An English langauge entry on Wikipedia gives an overview and a website in Czech with various historical resources and documents can be found here.

Sentenced to death in absentia, the Mašins are considered heroes by some and morally ambiguous extremists by others, principally for their ruthlessness: killing a fireman investigating a massive arson attack sabotaging harvested hay; a cashier shot in a robbery to raise funds; and the killing two Czech policemen in raids on police stations for firerms (one was chloroformed and then had this throat cut). The group also shot dead East German soldiers and policemen hunting them in their flight across the GDR. Some German civilians were also killed in the crossfire, probably by the East German police.

Both brothers later emigrated to the USA and served in the US army. They still live in the US and seem have never set foot in post-communist Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic. This, however, seems to be more due to a lack of recognition than through concern about their legal position: the third escapee, Milan Paumer, returned to the Czech Republic in 2001 and is active in radical anti-communist politics. It’s hard to find anything much about their exact legal statusas debate is dominated by discussion of their moral and political question. There is a (largely symbolic) 1993 law on the Illegality of the Communist Regime, however, so presumably they face no legal threats.

Indeed, the post-communist Czech right (now including the Greens) have always sought to honour them the Mašin and pass another (again essentially symbolic) law recognising them (and ex-political prisoners of 1950s) as a ‘third resistance’ with a status equivalent to those who fought for Czechoslovak independence during World War 1 and anti-Nazi resistance fighters in WWII. The traditional left and some liberals, however, have always been leery of this. The controversy is now being replayed because of Prime Minister Topolánek’s recent awarding the new (but rather low-ranking) Prime Minister’s medal to the two Mašin brothers and Paumer.

Lidové noviny reports the discovery of supposedly new archive material concerning plans to assassinate Czechoslovakia’s first Communist President Klement Gottwald - stressing the far-reaching political character of their actions. In a later issue Anna Šabatová, the wife of left-wing ex-dissident Petr Uhl, puts the case against recognition: the Mašin brothers are so politically and socially divisive, she claims, they erode any possibility of a shared sense of Czech history, which is vital to the development of democracy. They are neither heroes not villains. Lionizing them sends the wrong message about the kind of values Czechs should build their future society on: killing the innocent in the name of higher political goals is, after all, the moral rationale of people we often term terrorists. Moreover, the police records cited in defence of the far-reaching political character of their resistance are - like many such records of supposed armed plots against communist - totally inreliable. The regime needed to convince the world (and itself) that it faced dangerous armed counter-revolutionaries.

Šabatová’s piece, however, has the result of persuading me that, on balance, Topolánek was probably right. This was partly because I didn’t find her counter-arguments very convincing: phrases like ‘the debate about our past is above all a debate about our future’ trip easily off the pen, but mean little in practice. The notion of a ‘common history’ - of overcoming the divisions of the past through intellectual debate and intellectual accommodation - is deeply rooted one in the thinking of many ex-dissidents thinking. Petr Pithart was perhaps the prime and most eloquent exponent of this view bother before and after 1989. Why should there be a ‘common history?’ Is the essence of democracy not difference? Is the ‘cancerous polarisation of our society’ not just a description of pluralism? Czechs disagree about healthcare reform, the direction of the EU and the electoral system, so why not history? The idea the ‘right’ interpretation of history by intellectuals somehow generating values for the future is also deeply embedded, but frankly TV soap operas, advertising and package holidays probably do more to shape values than polemics in

If, as Czech law says, communist rule was as an illegal totalitarian regime then armed resistance seems hard to discredit morally and politically. Was it so different from the action of Czechoslovak paratroopers sent into the country during the World War II to organize politically important, but militarily insignificant, acts of resistance? Some of them also ended up shooting at the Czech policemen. Leaving aside parallels with anti-Nazi resistance, historical memory of the Hungarian Revolution seems rather oddly able to contemplate secret policeman hanging from lampposts without seeing the episode as essentially morally ambiguous. Most people will accept some degree of brutality, ‘collateral damage’ and moral transgression as regrettable but inevitable if they think, overall, there is legitimate reason to use violence. The worst one can perhaps say is that it armed resistence was clearly futile as a strategy, but then so (viewed at the time) was the peaceful dissident resistance of the 1970s and 80s.

Of course, the inconvenient truth, that not many Czechs outside the confines of the Communist Party want face too directly, is that the ‘if’ at the start of the paragraph is quite a big ‘if’. Hungarians can safely assume that the communist regime lacked social roots. Czechs, embarrassingly and misguidedly, voted the Communists into power in 1946. The heroism and brutality of the Mašins is a good way for all sides to deal with this while simultaneously ducking the question head on. Indeed, it seems to serve as an odd social pyschological safety valve.

Václav Havel: Uncomfortable arguments slip below the radar

Ex-President Havel makes a rare public appearance in the media and rare public comments on current politics to argue that Czechs should agree to the stationing of the planned US anti-missile radar base - public opinion is overwhelmingly against, the main (right-wing) governing party ODS for, the left against, other parties fudging the issue. Havel argues that the US is asking little and that Czechs should agree because they have a historic debt to the US: for the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 and for robust American support of dissident opposition during the Cold War. He also chucks in the argument that anti-radar elements are expressing a pacifism akin to that of the 1930s, which overlooked the threat of Nazi Germany. (Any Czech politician worth his salt will always come up with a historical analogy about Czechoslovakia’s ignominious collapse in 1938, when s/he thinks the stakes are high). Havel's characterisation is inaccurate, however, as radar opponents are generally anti-American and/or see the US anti-missile project as a pointless and hostile gesture towards Russia and China, which is not in the Czech (or EU) interest.

More uncomfortably Havel’s arguments have strange echoes of Brezhnev’s after 1968: the Red Army’s liberation of Czechoslovakia in 1945, which Czechs and Slovak’s couldn’t quite manage themselves, required loyalty to the big protecting ally regardless of what might be in the more immediate Czech national interest or what Czechs might otherwise wish, Leonid Illich explained. A Realpolitik argument about facing up to Putin’s Russia and/or China would frankly have been more convincing, but Havel only does historical and moral so instead we get a kind of Atlanticist pastiche of Brezhnev plus a not very convincing aside about the Iranian threat ….

Meanwhile on the fringes, I see that the tiny Stalinist youth wing of the Czech Communist party, the Communist Youth Union (KSM) has been banned for having acommitment to the abolition of private property in its statues, which goes against the constitutionally embedded Charter of Human Rights. KSM previously faced the chop (quite rightly I thought) for having a phrase about the ‘revolutionary overthrow’ of capitalism its the statutes - implying violence. However, this has since been toned down to ‘revolutionary overcoming' or, more freely translated 'revolutionary superseding'. The Interior Ministry’s continuing support for a ban (first initiated under a Social Democrat-led government, I should note), which the Constitutional Court has just upheld seems a bit harsh. As the KSM’s main activity is doing legwork for anti-radar protests and its chance of overthrowing (sorry, that should overcoming ‘overcoming’) capitalism are about the same as a snowstorm in July, they can perhaps cry foul. On the other hand, the bleating of various neo-Stalinists in the letters page of The Guardian about anti-communist oppression in the country with the largest and most militant CP in mainland Europe was frankly too much….

The neo-fascist right (whose organisations have also been subject to periodic bans and deregistrations by the Czech Interior Ministry over the years) is also campaigning against the US radar bases (on nationalist grounds), I should add.

City slicker

I lived in Prague for three years, from 1996 to 1999. After several years living in the Czech Republic’s second city, Brno, it was something of a relief to end up in a bigger more cosmopolitan environment of the capital. Praguers were invariably unfazed (and uninterested) by foreigners living in their midst, and even foreigners speaking Czech. So I was naturally drawn to Martin Horak’s study of city government in Prague in the decade following the collapse of communism, Governing the Post-Communist City, which promised to reveal the politics behind my daily bus journey from the high rise estate of New Barrandov past the traffic bottlenecks at the Barrandov bridge down to Smíchov Station to pick up the tram, which raced past some rather tacky shops and finally snaked its way into historic old Prague, where I would get off in the Lesser Quarter and walk past the US Embassy to the Institute for Contemporary History and sit reading my way through the Civic Forum archive and batches of newspapers from the early 1990s.

Although not exactly bedtime reading it’s an innovative and interesting book in a least two ways. Firstly, it seeks quite rightly to shift the research agenda on democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) from democratic transition and consolidation - that is measuring up CEE democracies against an ideal of ‘established’ or ‘advanced’ democracy, basically an idealized composite of what exists in the West - to issues of governance and democratic quality - how well democracy works, to paraphrase Robert Putnam. High quality democratic performance in Horak’s definition is essentially transparency in policy-making, openness of policymakers to societal inputs and the long-term strategic coherence of policies adopted. Secondly, by focusing on governance in a capital city such as Prague, Horak is able to link up political, economic and social institutions in a fairly holistic way, which would be nigh on impossible for a national political system. A capital city’s political system is sufficiently small to research in depth, but large and complex enough to flag wider issues of institutional evolution and democratic governance.

The book centres on two lovingly detailed case studies: transport policy and preservation in Prague’s historic core. As quickly becomes from these policy sectors , the Czech capital scores poorly on all key indicators of democratic quality. Policy-making was opaque, piecemeal, expensive, inefficient and largely closed to the public. Such democratic failure was, however, puzzling. Prague’s city government had many prerequisites for success. It rapidly regained strong fiscal and political autonomy after 1989, had a large professional administrative apparatus and controlled sizeable tax and property resources.

Horak draws on an innovative strand in ‘historical institutionalist’ literature to explain such underperformance. The key he argues is to be found in the unevenness with which different sets of institutions developed after 1989. While new democratically elected structures of representation quickly emerged in 1990, the structures and policy-making frameworks of municipal administrators remained heavily influenced by the close technocratic practices of the late communist era, when professional planners were largely left alone by Communist Party bosses. Although emergent civic initiatives had some initial influence, inexperienced new city councillors facing multiple demands tended to opt for simple short-term solutions, drawing on existing communist-era policy frameworks or maximising opportunities for personal profit. This trend was exacerbated by the absence of strong regional structures in the right-wing Civic Democratic Party, which dominated Prague politics after 1991, but generally lacked a coherent political programme for the city.

Different policy sectors, however, exhibited different dynamics. Transport planning bodies and large formerly state-owned construction companies functioned as a powerful lobby for the exclusion of civil society groups from policy-making and the completion of communist-era motorway building plans. Civic groups quickly settled into a protest oriented strategy, enjoying some success in modifying or blocking the implementation of road building (sending costs spiralling), but were poorly equipped to feed into policy processes when invited to do so. This offers a rather interesting alternative perspective to the environmentalists-as-heroes interpretation that found in more conventional social movement based accounts such as, for example, Adam Fagan’s Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic (Edward Elgar, 2004), where we find out a lot about protest and protesters, but politicians, bureaucrats and business are largely off stage baddies. A nice illustration of how Horak’s ‘holistic’ approach does indeed deliver new insights.

Prague’s preservation authorities shared the same technocratic culture as those of transport planners but were more open to civic groups, which, like them, generally opposed extensive commercialization of historic areas of Prague. However, preservation institutions quickly buckled and fragmented under pressure from local politicians, who blocked systematic and open policymaking in favour of closed, ad hoc decision making which facilitated lucrative relationships with developers and investors. There is little direct proof, but a mass of circumstantial evidence confirming the reputation of Prague municipal politics and administration as a cesspool of corruption. One of the more jaw dropping findings is that fully half of Prague’s elected city councillors in the late 1990s were involved with real estate companies and all but on sat on the boards of private companies of some kind. Only when the development potential of historic central Prague was exhausted and national freedom of information legislation forced greater openness was this pattern broken. Interestingly, Horak finds, there was less evidence of corruption in transport policy, presumably because construction companies and planners formed a tight and compact lobby touting for big long-term projects, which required more than the one-off buying of councillors for specific decisions.

Despite occasionally dense passages on Prague history and municipal bureaucracy, Horak has written a fine book, which skilfully interweaves documentary research with interviews with politicians, planners and civic activists, to produce a rich and subtle account of Czech politics capturing many nuances that other accounts overlook. To some extent, the specific nature of Prague as a case study limits the generalisability of the book’s findings. Its implicit view of democracy as consensus building between functional actors (business, civil society, bureaucrats and politicians), for example, would not scale up well to most national systems, where party politics is generally more competitive and interests more zero-sum. However, Horak’s central theoretical insight is original and does cut the mustard: that post-communist democratic development is a changing patchwork of overlapping institutional structures, each embodying different legacies and each liable to break open into differently timed ‘critical junctures’ when political choices suddenly matter. Indeed, his empirical analysis tends to subvert conventional historical institutionalist accounts more radically than Horak himself allows. What is most striking is how few realistic opportunities emerged for Prague’s overloaded, easily corruptible and programmatically bereft politicians to choose paths away from the flawed democratic practices so powerfully shaped by multiple communist-era legacies and rampant new business interests.

There are, inevitably, a few quibbles too over what the book might but doesn’t do. Bringing the story up to date would have given a richer more nuanced picture of the success (or not) of city government in Prague, than that furnished by the largely transitional politics of the 1990s It would also be interesting to know the impacts on Prague politics of the (much delayed) introduction of regional authorities across the Czech Republic in 2002 or EU membership. Missing too is any real sense of Prague’s place in Czech national politics - its relationships with the regions, importance as bastion of the right; and role as a harbinger for social and political change in the Czech Republic all merit some discussion. The recent rise of the Green Party not only confirms the importance of Prague as an incubator for national political leaders - Green leader Martin Bursík has a longer career behind him (in various parties) in Prague city politics, as does Social Democrat leader Jiří Paroubek - but suggests it could be seen in some ways as a harbinger of social and political change. But when all is said and done, Governing the Post-Communist City, is that rare thing, a damn good original academic book.

Blog tracks Czech anti-Islamic 'ultraconservatives'

A Czech political blog, seemingly written by a student of Middle Eastern studies, contains quite a short paper (in Czech) on the activities of the small Young Right (Mladá pravice) grouping, which occupies an odd kind of no man’s land between the Czech far right proper and the fringe of the Czech centre-right proper, especially Václav Klaus’s CEP thinktank, rather cockamammy attempts to fuse ‘anti-Jihadism’and anti-immigrant positions drawn from Western Europe and North America with traditional Czech nationalism at outlined in a previous poste. Leaving aside the rather ponderous attempts at theory building, the paper is quite an interesting read, although I am little galled to find myself described (unreferenced) as an ‘American political scientist’ - despite the vogue for all things 'Czeltic', some Czechs seem automatically to assume that anyone called Seán is American - who thinks the Czech right is as a Central European national-liberal mutuation of Anglo-American models. Clearly, the library of the West Bohemian University haven't forked out for a copy of my book.

Do Slovak and Czech Christian Democrats have a prayer?

The continuing dominance of Robert Fico’s SMER in Slovak politics – ably tracked and analyzed by Kevin Deegan Krause in the excellent Pozorblog – is aggravating an ongoing crisis of the sundry liberal and Christian parties that held sway amid a blaze oneo-liberal welfare and labour reform between 1998 – 2006. The splits and rivalries, seem basically about personal ambitions and rival personalities, but are punctuated by calls for generational renewal (is there a Slovak Barack Obama in the house?) and seem to also have an ideological/politcal subtext centring on one issue: about how to confront the populist/national-populist left, whose poll ratings and (worringly) dislike of NGOs and desire to heavy-handedly regular the press have uncomfortable echos of the dominance once exercised by Vladimír Mečiar and his HZDS (now seemingly relegated to a bit part in Fico’s coalition government).

The core of the Slovak centre-right is notionally Christian Democratic - there two mainly parties using the tag, the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), which has roots in the Christian dissidence before 1989, the more (socially) liberal Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ), formed as something of a personal vehicle for then Prime Mikuláš Dzurinda, although various neo-liberal technocrats seems to have hitched a ride with KDH too. The woes of the various stripes of Slovak Christian Democrats have interesting echoes in the current travails of the Czech Christian Democrats who, squeezed between powerful free market right and social democratic and communist left, have never had the whip hand in government and never been able to integrate liberal forces to broaden their appeal. The closest they came to a breakthough was in the ill-fated Quad-Coalition (4k) project in 1999-2001 when the two big parties of left and right were cosying up to each other. The exit from poilitics of the adroit Josef Lux in 1998 after being diagnosed with leukaemia (he died in 1999) finished KDU's prospects of being as much more than a niche party for Catholics in rural regions and confused centrist voters with nowhere to go. Despite good poll rating the fraught 4K project collapsed and split much like the Slovak Democratic Coalition, which indirectly it and spawned Dzurinda's SDKÚ

There followed faction fighting between more liberal (Bohemian-based) and more conservative (Moravian-based) elements in KDU; consequent frequent changes of leader (none, however, very personally commanding) and the lack of a clear strategy as to what Czech Christian Democrats actually stood for and whether they were of the left, right or centre (a perennial dilemma for small parties in a system with well established large parties) has seen the party's support dwindle to its core electorate leaving it hovering dangerously over the 5% threshold that spells political oblivion.

The directionlessness of the party was gruesomely illustrated by the sudden initiative of then KDU leader Miroslav Kalousek in 2006 to enter a Social Democrat-led minority coalition government with Communist support (it never materialized - he was sacked after an internal revolt) and its turning in desperation to newly elected Christian Democrat Senator and small town mayor Jiří Čunek, whose staggering popularity in the 2006 Senate election stemmed from expelling local Roma with chronic rent arrears from municipal housing in the town centre and re-locating them in the outskirts of town. Rapidly embroiled in corruption allegations stemming from his mayoral term(s) and squeezed out ministerial office (he was Minister of Local Development), but not the KDU leadership Čunek's small town populism has proved inadequate to re-launch his party. As highlighted in other posts the Civic Democrats - behind in the polls to the Czech Social Democrats (who, nevertheless, have not reached Fico-like levels of support) - are effectively marking time to see which of their minor allies, the Greens or the Social Democrats, will implode first and which they might somehow absorb to bolster themselves ideologically and electorally.

Ironically, KDU's long and detailed 2006 election programme, which, rather in the Slovak style, combined neo-liberal fiscal and welfare prescriptions (toned down to suit Czech tastes) as well as the usual social market, family protection, communitarian stuff was widely praised by experts as more realistic and better through through than the Civic Democrats' shot-in-the-dark version of flat tax-led neo-liberal reform.

And generational renewal? Commentators and politicians in CEE are always harping on about this, but it's hard to see quite how newer or younger will necessarily mean better. Such comments are, usually a disguised call for in political renewal or cleaner, better, more liberal government - amen to that, but even though there is no primaries system there is ample scope for new parties to emerge or young technocrats to parachute themselves into organizationally weak, elite-led parties. The Slovak experience suggests that many voters don't want renewal of this kind, but stability. Is the Slovak Barack Obama actually Robert Fico?

Klaus wins amid whiff of corruption and populist cameo

So, inevitably, Václav Klaus is re-elected in the third round of the re-run Czech presidential election with 141 parliamentary voters to Švejnar‘s rather paltry 113. They vote in public - Klaus’s supporters are confident of winning and so don’t make a fuss, but the whole process is still painfully slow and still takes all day. VK still manages to pick up the vote of now expelled Social Democrat deputy Evžen Snitílý, most Christian Democrats and a few independent right-wing Senators carefully ‘minded’ by ODS parliamentarians to make sure they didn’t change their minds.

Snítilý joins a fairly long line of ex-party colleagues who have succumbed to the persuasion and blandishments of the right over the year. I can’t think of a single case of case of anyone defecting the other way from Civic to the Social Democrats. There is also the curiously incident of the non-appearance of Green deputy, Olga Zubová, which leave Green leader Martin Busík gobsmacked when he is informed of it by text message mid-way through the morning speeches. A Green Minister is finally dispatched to her home to find out what is going on. Apparently, she is ill due to post-operative complications from recent surgery, although Green leaders find the incident ‘inexcusable’ and ‘strange’ - which I take as a hint they suspect some kind of shady goings on. Her absence could have made all the difference by lower the attendence and hence the number of votes needed for a majority in the third round, but in the event it doesn't. Snítilý's vote for Klaus is arguably more crucial. In the lunch break TV commentators more or less openly speculate about whether this long-serving Social Democrat has been tempted to ‘secure his family’s future’ or just had a nervous breakdown. Ceské noviny reports most of the corruption allegations briefly here and also suggests that the going rate for a pro-Klaus vote is about 2 million crowns (around £55,000 sterling).

You almost believe the diagnosis of the Communists’ presidential candidate, Jana Bobošiková, the independent populist Euro MP and ex-news reader, that the Czech Republic is one small step from a mafia state. There was admittedly a great deal of exaggeration as various parliamentarians melodramatically confided their fears about the threatening texts and emails they had received for voting the ‘wrong’ way in the previous election and but true some loon(s) did sent some deputies and senators envelopes with bullets in. Moreover, the apparent nobbling of opposition MPs - an accusation that keeps surfacing in connection with the Civic Democrats in tight situations - did give Czech politics a distinct whiff of the post-Soviet . Perhaps, as the news magazine Respekt suggested, all we have is simply a shop window for Czech politics as it really is, although in truth it was probably the 2004 and 2006 Senate elections, whose majoritarian system benefited the Civic Democrats hugely, that sealed Klaus's re-election more than the big bucks or shady deals that may have pushed him over the finishing line and saved us from a third or fourth set of presidential elections.

With the Christian Democrats won over to Klaus (expect a generous new restitution settlement with the Catholic Church) Švejnar never really had a chance. Various commentators suggest that his challenge was a kind of heroic failure - it was impressive that it materialized at all, a shrewd move by the Greens who first floated his candidacy, a clever play by the Social Democrats, who swallowed their dislike of Švejnar’s economic liberalism and tried to use the election to derail the government (as Klaus’s election derailed theirs in 2003)., and so on. I am rather sceptical about this, however. There are no second prizes in politics - the only and obvious winners are Klaus and ODS. Even the Communists, who seem to have not bothered to vote for Švejnar in the end, missed out on their previous role as kingmakers due to lack of parliamentary voters and a rather blatantly fielded set of public demands.

Possibly, the only other winner may be Jana Bobošiková, who bowed out as Communist standard bearer even before the voting had started, but gained some useful publicity and dealt very confidently and professionally with media questioning about her (basically pointless) candidacy. She was an interesting choice for the Communists, who in previous presidential elections have usually settled on some crusty academician. Bobošiková, by contrast has the demeanour of Anna Ford and the politics of Robert Kilroy-Silk with perhaps a touch of Imelda Marcos. She was elected to the European Parliament in 2004 on the populist eurosceptic Independent Democrats (ND) list of by ex-TV magnate Vladimír Železný, but broke with Železný, who checkered business and political career is full of such breaks, she is now associated with the tiny Politika 21 party, which briefly came to fame when the ex-wife of Civic Democrat PM Miroslav Topolánek stood as a Politika 21 candidate in the 2006 Senate elections. Leaving the far-right Republicans, who were very much a phenomenon of the 1990s and finally pegged out as a parliamentary force in 1998, the Independent Democrats were perhaps the closest the Czech politics has come to a populist upsurge of the kind seen elsewhere in CEE.

Czech presidential election: farce and deadlock as Klaus misses out by 1 vote

The final round of voting in the Czech presidential election is marked by further procedural wrangles, confused reports that three (or four?) parliamentarians have been taken ill and accusations of skulduggery. Some of the voting figures from the second round have been miscalculated, but opposition parties’ don’t seem care as the second round is just a prelude to the decisive third round; Christian Democrat Senator Josef Kabáč, ,one of the tellers, seems to have gone AWOL on the second day with no one noticing. This was initially reported as being due his disgust at Parliament voting in public, but actually - it turns out - because of heart problems.

Then there are accusations - an overheard conversation in a corridor - that Civic Democrat Interior Minister Ivan Langer and one of his parliamentarian colleagues have done some kind of shady deal with Social Democrat deputy, Evžen Snítílý. There seems to be a history of this kind of thing in Czech politics. The current centre-right minority government only took office last year thanks to the defection of two social democrat deputies, who now sit as independents (Both voted for Klaus in the presidential election) Similar things took place in the 1990s - for some reason Czech Social Democrats seems to lack a certain ideological backbone. The situation is resolved, sort of, when Snítílý collapses and has to leave the proceedings for medical reasons - or was that part of the agreement (if there was an agreement?)?

When the vote, when it finally takes place, slightly against expectations, Václav Klaus one vote short of election, probably due to the unexpected absence - or unnoticed - of Kabáč. Klaus polls 139 votes. Švejnar is far behind won113 voters, but because the Communists parliamentarian have physically stayed put in the Spanish Hall put pushes up the majority required to 140. There are (despite the graphic above) 26 abstentions and three absences.

As in 2003, the whole three-round election process now need to be repeated. Friday is the day to watch. The Czech press is full of the predicable fuming about the undignified and farcical nature of the whole process, but you do wonder when the country will opt for the simple expedient of electing the President directly?

As far as the contest is concerned, Klaus remains favourite. Švejnar would need not only to garner some Christian Democratic votes, but also get the Communists actively on side. Unlikely, but doubtless combative Social Democrat leader and ex-PM Jiří Paroubek will try to stitch such an coalition together - or perhaps just block the whole process.

Czech presidential election: Boredom in Bohemia, but Klaus edges ahead

The day of the Czech presidential elections is at last upon us. Naturally, I tune in to ČT24, the Czech CNN, bright and early to listen the joint session of the Czech parliament that is to elect the President. The speechifying takes till lunchtime. Klaus says he offers continuity and stability and also throws a blatant pitch for Christian Democrat votes stressing the need for a social dimension in politics and his opposition to euthanasia and political correctness. Švejnar that he offers change, consultation and consensus - a new Technicolor vision for Czech politics - but is moderate and sensible and doesn’t want anyone to be left behind (Interesting and revealing how two such economic liberals need to play to the ‘social’ orientation of the majority even in parliament).

Then various leading Czech politicos take the floor. It‘s generally rather predictable stuff. Civic Democrat leader Topolánek gives Klaus a ringing endorsement - VK is, love him or hate him, is not bland and boring and is a Czech patriot. There are some surprisingly effective speeches by Green leader Martin Bursík and Social Democrat leader Jiří Paroubek. Despite strong personal animosity and being on opposite sides of the political divide - Bursík’s liberal-minded Greens are in coalition with the centre-right Civic Democrat party Klaus founded - both accuse him of transforming the presidency into a personal vehicle; failing to consult the government on key decisions; carrying out a personal foreign policy; and discrediting the country with extreme and eccentric views on climate change and European integration. Klaus walks out when independent Senator and ex-student leader of 1989 Martin Mejstřik starts laying into him, although given Mejstřik’s awkward hyperbole and irritating use of Latin proverbs in every other sentence, who can blame him?

Then we get to voting proper - sort of. In the best Czech traditions, deputies and senators actually spend the next nine hours trying to agree procedural questions - whether they will vote in a secret ballot or openly, and how they should decide that (jointly or as seprate chambers). Finally, as evening wears on, they find a compromise and agree to vote in public. In round 1, Klaus is narrowly ahead (139: 138), but no one wins in both chambers of parliament. Round 2 takes place, but parliamentarians vote to finish the session at 9pm and re-convene tomorrow. The Social Democrats block Civic Democrat efforts to extend the session - presumably they want a breathing space to Officially, the results will be announced tomorrow, but unofficially we know Klaus is ahead by 142: 135.

If repeated in the third round, he’s re-elected by 1 vote. Combined the Civic Democrats and Christian Democrats have 140 parliamentarians, so they need - and seem already to have gained the support of 2 non-aligned senators or deputies. The anti-Klaus parties - Social Democrats, Communists, Greens and various small liberal groups in the Senate - have perhaps 125-130 definite votes.

Klaus’s stock on, the OpenDemocracy virtual political futures market on the Czech presidential election has now risen to a commanding 79%.

Czech presidential debate: dull but informative

I finally get to watch the Czech Presidential debate between incumbent Václav Klaus and challenger Jan Švejnar courtesy of the the Czech Television website held two days (starts with a 20 second commercial for Czech TV, but stay tuned). Candidates will get to make a formal address to the joint session of the Czech parliament that elects the Czech Head of State in February, but this head-to-head between presidential candidates is is a first the Czech Republic- and it’s a rather odd affair, held not in a TV studio or a public forum, but in a historic committee room as a special sitting of the Social Democrat faction in the Senate but with TV camera in attendance. Social Democrat Senators are thus the only ones to ask questions of two distinctly liberal, pro-market economists. Both candidates make opening statements. Klaus gives his usual confident, hard-edged professional pitch, but later gets a little rattled when he thinks that Švejnar will get answer questions second and be able to critique his answers. They agree to take turns Klaus then tries to lighten the atmosphere with a dose of his usual brand of self-satisfied public bonhomie. The ensuing exchanges are, however, dull but still quite informative.

Klaus argues that he is politically experienced; has had his differences with the Social Democrats (something of an understatement if we take his rhetoric of the 1990s seriously, perhaps we shouldn’t) but believes in ‘social feeling’ (sociální cítění) - the Czech term for some kind of commitment to welfare; he will not make the Presidency an alternative power centre or substitute it for parties (like Václav Havel did, we are supposed to understand). Švejnar begins nervously and speaks too quickly. At first he sounds like he is at attending job interview, rather than presenting a manifestion for political office, but he gets into his strides later on. He is, he says, genuinely independent and his inexperience is an advanage - he represents changes and address the discontent many Czechs feels; has experience of the policy world both abroad and in the CR; and understands the economic challenges of globalization.

The good Senators then pose a series of questions, centring - as one might expect - on social and economic issues. The mistakes of privatization in the 1990s? Irrelelvant to current politics, perhaps inevitable in the circumstances and no worse than elsewhere says Klaus. Much worse than elsewhere says Švejnar with some authority. Charges for visiti