Chronicle of a (party) death foretold

I am not always the most astute of pundits, but as the dust settled a year ago even I could see that the Veci veřejné ('Public Affairs'), the anti-establishment, anti-corruption party that was the surprise package last May's Czech elections would - to borrow Kevin Deegan Krause's phrase - live fast and die young. And, as I write, VV seems to be on its political deathbed, rapidly expiring from an outbreak of splits and scandals, extreme even by local standards, that seems to be the political equivalent of ebola fever  - and may yet carry away the Czech government centre-right coalition  government of Petr Nečas in which VV is a junior partner. Expulsions and splits have seen four of VV's 24 deputies leave the party; its chief sponsor and de facto leader Vít Bárta resign as transport minister; and its two bigger partners demand that Mr Bártaand cronies from the ABL security firm leave the government.

Vít Bárta/ Fotobanka ČTK

The problem? Revelations in the media over recent days, have bluntly confirmed  - with documentary and audio evidence - what most people suspected all along:

1) that, nothingwithstanding claims to a postmodern party of electronic direct democracy run through snazzy electronic referendums of members and sympathisers, Mr Bárta controlled and orchestrated the whole organisation;

2) that he used extremely an extremely basic method of party management to keep leading deputies on board,  of the kind that any City of London banker would recognise: he paid them huge sums of cash;

3) that he   backed VV as a project to foward his Napoleonic business ambition for his security company ABL, rightly recognising that public sector contracts were a lucrative source of cash and required political contacts;

4) that VV was conceived as an essentially local project,aimed at securing influence, indeed control, local councils in two Prague boroughs and was conceived as a kind of insurance policy or plan B, to run in parallel with efforts to gain influence in local organisations of the Civic Democrats;

5) that Mr Bárta is a ruthless operator keen on industrial espionage and subterfuge, including the creation of  'pseduo-competitors' to maintain an illusion of transparency and competiton in tenders, and that he transfered some of these techniques to political activities using his company to track the activities of local politicians in Prague.

Given that Veci veřejné's appeal and origins were one of anti-corruption, transparency and taking on political dinosaurs - its name better translated as Public Interest or Res Publica and it was originally a local community politics initiative in Prague formed in respons to murky ways local municipal housing was being privatised deal - there would seem to be no way back, especially as Mr Bárta, who is clearly a strategic thinker of some skill, was foolish enough to put his strategy down in writing.

 Now the only question would seem to be which way the collapsing structure will fall and how many of its deputies will be recoverable, reliable and usable for the two main parties in centre-right coalition, the Civic Democrats (ODS) and TOP09. This is a totally a forlorn hope. There are some impressively able young er people and political marketers in the VV fold, as well oddballs, ABL cronies and second rank figures well out of their depth (like the party's notional leader and hapless Interior Minister, the former investigative journal Radek John) and for a working majority the other two parties would need about 10-12 ex-Večkaři.

From a more nerdish political science point of view it seems a shame that this most unusual and interesting political phenomenon - closer to the 'pocket parties' created by businesspeople in the Baltic state or (it now seems) the phoney virtual parties of the former Soviet Union - is soon to be no more, although its death may be drawn out, mucky and unedifying. Perhaps most telling is that far from being corrupted and eaten into by holding power, the whole project was tainted and corrupt from the start, subverting the political appeal of anti-corruption and anti-establishment  politics to perpetuate and develop the very phenomena it was fighting against. Perhaps I shouldn't be too worried, however, as other will no doubt be trying out and improving upon Mr Bárta's business model in the choppy electoral markets of Czech politics.

They say cutback, we say... червен картон

Sofia, 26 March 2011 Photo: BSP TV

According to news reports, some 16,000  marched through the streets of Sofia under the auspices of the opposition Socialist Party to protest against unemployment and depleted public services. Allowing for differences in population size, this equates to a march about half the size of the Saturday's  250, 000 strong trade union sponsored protest in London, but not all bad for a relatively a weak civil society stemming from all the usual post-communist legacies. And a mildly imaginative rouch with the theme of giving Bulgaria's government a red card (червен картон). A day later there are blockades by car drivers angry about the price of fuel following the next day and demonstration about nuclear power plant construction are also in the pipeline no pun intended). Characteristically, perhaps all three are organised by political parties, rather than civil sociery organisation and, unlike in London, the radical left,  marginal in the region at the best of times and workerist, so there are no anarchist casseurs or direct action activists occupying smart shops in Sofia - and Socialist leader Sergei Stanishev is no Ed Milland (although possibly that should be the other way round)

London, 26 March 2011 Photo: Ben Hall

The Czech Republic does rather better in terms of turnout and civil society capacity with a 40, 000 strong protest against government austerity in Prague last September, which allowing for the CR's 10 million population, compares well with Saturday's TUC march  - and strikes toboot. Perhaps, however, that should be less a source of pride for the Czech labour movement - which plays a smart game, but is in structural decline (as Martin Myant, a far from unsympathetic observer, outlines in the latest issue of Czech Sociological Review - than a warning for Brits: Prague's centre-right coalition government has pressed on regardless, more sensitive to its own internal tensions and a beating from the electorate, than to the massed ranks of the Czech public sector on the streets of the nation's capital. The UK's - or perhaps I should say England's - more rampantly anti-statist traditions make it still more easy to shake off the concerns teachers, nurses, social workers and students, especially when it is pitched vaguely a march for The Alternative that no one can meaningly and identify anarchists and UK Uncut add to the fog of war. No one, thankfully, has quite persuaded the bulf of Czechs that the social market and the welfare state belongs on the scrapheap of history.

Czech local elections: Another flicker on the seismograph?

Did you miss them? How could you? Perhaps you were distracted doing something this weekend? The Czech local elections - spiced up by brace of Senate contests, which will (mostly) conclude with run-off elections next week - have been and gone. Admittedly, they didn't not quite repeat the political earthquake of the parliamentary elections in May, but there were a number of powerful tremors and further aftershocks bringing down unstable party structures cannot be ruled out.

 

The main story of the weekend seems to be the electoral battering taken by the Civic Democrats (ODS) in major urban centres, where they have historically dominated: with the exception of Plzeň, they were beaten into second place in all provincial capitals by the (still leaderless) Social Democrats (ČSSD)and, as in the parliamentary elections in May, beaten into second place in Prague by TOP09. ODS did, however, manage to be the standard bearer for the centre-right in most of the 27 Senate seats up for re-election, although in most they trail the Social Democrats badly and are likely to register big losses come the second round of voting next week. Interestingly, the Christian Democrats - dumped out of parliament in May - managed to make it into the run-offs against Social Democrats in a couple of seats in Moravia. In the face of some (by Czech standards) pretty tough-minded austerity, many Czech voters have saw-sawed back to the centre-left - or at least actually bothered to vote - suggesting that the social market instincts of the Czech electorate should never be underestimated. A quick glance at numbers of candidates fielded (see below) also, interestingly suggests that ČSSD  (light orange) now has a sustained national organisational reach it once lacked, although almost  half of candidates running were unorganised independents (not graphed).

TOP09, the new party formed by ex-Christian Democrats and independents formed in 2009 and led by aristocratic ex-Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg confirmed that, at least in the short-term it is a force to be reckoned with, with a biggish slate of candidates polling well across the country - with support centred in urban areas - but (with the key exception of Prague) failing to overhaul the Civic Democrats other than in the Moravian city of Zlín (home of the Bat'a shoe empire), where it benefited from the   unpopularity of a long-term Grand Coalition of Civic and Social Democrats and seems well placed to take control of the city in alliance with local independents. In the longer term, however, the lack of a significant further breakthrough to follow up its success in May may weaken the party.  On the other hand, the party can draw comfort from its relatively good electoral performance - and organizational spread - running separately from the Mayors and Independents bloc with whom it ran a joint parliamentary electoral list in May, although the Mayors notched up 1243 councillors to TOP's 1509 councillors despite fielding many more candidates. On the other had, a quick glance at figures for urban boroughs shows that TOP predominates in bigger cities and towns, where there is more local power and money (338 TOP borough councillors to the Mayors' modest 22).

The other new party swept in parliament in May, Public Affairs (VV), fared much less well. Despite fielding a reasonably number of local candidates for a new party, flopped badly in both Senate and local elections: even in Prague where it had its origins it barely scrapped together 5 percent  and thanks to a gerrymandering by the outgoing Civic Democrat administration (splitting Prague into seven electoral districts) failed to make it onto the Prague city council. The Greens suffered a similar fate, although after years of electoral marginality they are probably used to it and, unlike VV whose demise may only be a matter of time, will probably live to fight another day. 

Even star VV Senate candidate, ex-Foreign Minister and ex-Senator Josef Zeleniec failed to make it into the second round running in Prague. How he and various other politicians from small more established liberal centre-right parties must regret hitching their wagons to VV: the party's Prague electoral leader, Markéta Reedová, former leader of the European Democrats, anti-corruption campaigner and bugbear of the Civic Democrats during their less than squeaky-clean time at the helm of the Czech capital, looked shattered after the poll - as well she might having seen her former party (in alliance with the Greens) outpoll VV's well funded operation. TOP09 now seems likely to take over the mayoralty in Prague and there will, I predict, soon be a queue of  prominent ex-VV-ers beating a path to TOP09.

Still, in most places TOP and the Civic Democrats seemed doomed to co-operate with ODS having the upper hand in most places except Prague.

Czech history lessons?

Lack of time and lack of expertise means I don't take more than a passing interest in academic history, but I note with interest the apparent outrage caused by a paper presented by French historian Muriel Blaive at a recent symposium held in London to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of Czechoslovak and Poland governments in exile Has the Czech Republic fully come to terms with the memory of the Second World War? The memory in question, the paper says, is the (so far unresearched) extent of Czech collaboration and passivity underNazi occupation and, specifically, with the implementation of the Holocaust. This theme, it is suggested, would violate established national narrative of Czechs as a liberal European nation, who were heroes or (more commonly) victims of a grim totalitarian double-whammy of Nazism and communism, and, in particular, undermine Czech moral credit in debates over post-war treatment and eventual mass 'transfer' of the Sudeten Germans.

There is well established set of arguments that (large sections) Czech society bears a certain responsibility for communism - enthusiatically backing the statist national democratic project of the Communist 1945 and falling too readily for reform communist illusions in the 1960s. Indeed, Muriel Blaive's earlier book (published in different versions in Czech and French) added to by suggesting that when Hungarians and Poles were taking to the streets in 1956, Czech society was unreactive not because deep democratic and anti-communist instincts were repressed, but because it was passive, inwardly and bought off by being (relatively speaking) well off. However, any suggestion that the Czechs were anything other victims of Nazism was, perhaps not surprisingly, moc silný kafe. Another implication, which you might take from the paper (although this is not explicitly given - merely mine) is that the agonised intellectual and historical debates over Czechs and (Sudeten) Germans which go back to the underground samizdat discussions of 1980s - including the self-searchingly self-critical ones - has obscured the need for one over wider Czech complicity

What should a political scientist make of all this? There is an interesting line of argument in the paper about the conversion and re-use of police and intelligence structures by successive regimes (democratic/Nazi/communist), which could feed interestingly into research on the nature of regime change state, especially given the current strong historical turn in the discipline. After all, wasn't one of the biggest mistakes the American made in Iraq the decision not to convert Baathist state structures?). And there clearly are some thoughts to be had about history, democractic quality, the partisan use of decommunization, the politicization of academic reseach institutions. At bottom, in a democratic society, there should, be no historical taboos - which in the Czech Republic clearly there still are - and historians clearly have a job to do, and that job includes looking at all the skelteons in all the cupboards. And there is a well rehearsed argument that openness and honestly about the past make for society better able to face up, discuss and solve its current problems.

On the other hand, you wonder quite what the Czech politicians and public are actually supposed to believe about themselves and their past? And especially, what if anything, they should feel positive about? Sure, Czech politics is animated by crude national-democratic myth, but - as the warm bath of nostalgic feel good documentaries about the Blitz and the Battle of Britain currently airing on British television shows - this isn't exactly unique. Admittedly, revisionist programming seeps uncontroversially into the schedules: watch the whole crop of WWII history and you can learn there was rampant crime and corruption during the Blitz; that British Blitz of German cities later in the war was more savage than than meted out by the Luftwaffe in 1940-1; that the Battle of Britain was won partly due to German incompetence in photo reconnaisance; that our military effort was buttressed by imperialism and racism and so on.

And, it would, of course be nice if British historical memory really wasn't dominated by the early years of the Second World war: WWI and WWII it is the only bit of modern history that most primary schools touch on, so it is no small wonder we are rapidly eurosceptic and have inflated sense of national importance. On the other hand, the use of academic history for endless repetitive masochistic, self-lacerating national self-criticism which some parts of the Czech intelligentsia delight in seems more likely a recipe for cynicism and anomie, rather than democratic renewal.

Perhaps, realistically, in what Phippe Schmitter once rather nicely termed really Existing Democracies, a safe disconnect between academic and popular history is all you should wish for.

Update:  Madelaine Albright's keynote address to the symposium can be seen in video here. It's a rather eloquent and well delivered presentation making  a well argued - if ultimately not totally convincing - case for traditional view of strong, if naturally imperfect, Czech democratic tradition derailed by geopolitical circumstance. A politician's rather than a historian's speech, but then as I say above that has its place.

Czech politics: The urge to merge?

The ink's hardly dry on the Czech coalition agreement and the Civic Democrats (ODS) haven't even yet been routed in the local elections - although we still haven't the foggiest who their candidate for mayor of Prague is - and already ODS MEP Hynek Fajmon is weighing in on his blog Spojit ODS a TOP09? Ne! Blog - Hynek Fajmon (blog.iDNES.cz) to say his party should not merge with TOP09. He's  dead right that it wouldn't work for organisational reasons - ODS is too structured and locally embedded, compared to TOP for merger to be an easy prospect and, for the same reasons, a loose electoral alliance like a join list would probably flounder. The stuff about ideological incompatibilities is - ODS is eurosceptic and anti-environmental, TOP a load of tree hugging europhiles - is, however, wishful thinking. True believers like Fajmon are becoming something of rare breed in ODS these days even in the rareified environment of the European Parliament. After all, the two parties signed a coalition agreement on time and in good order with most of the cracks down Public Affairs' esoteric demands on referenda and the the like.

And, call me a fashion victim if you will (curiously, no one ever does...), but with sweaters like the one sported by Mr F. on his blog, you do begin feel that the days of the Civic Democrats may indeed be numbered...I own a similar one myself.

MOR than just ice cream and beer

What can you do in the Czech Republic over several sunny summer days, but eat ice cream, have the odd, beer, seek out the local lido, read all the newspapers and steadily do the usual tour of all the in-laws. Actually, things seem to getting a bit more difficult than they used to be: tougher hygiene regulations and the filtering down of EU structural funds to local politicians and busipeople have seen the closure of a lot of traditional open air municipal pools and their replacement with self-styled 'Aquaparks'  charging double the price which have plenty of water slides and flumes for the kids, but basically nowhere to swim. Even allowing for the traditional 'cucumber season' when there is little hard news, there seems less and less to read in the Czech papers and, if buy five national dailies, you should manage to read most of the interesting news in about half an hour. There even seems to be fewer brands of beer to choose from and the local Janáček brew - nothing to do with the composer in case you were wondering - has daftly rebranded itself as Patriot, presumably in an effort to combine regional appeal with an up-to-date, English sounding moniker. 

There is, however, a little politics to be seen on the highways and byways of Moravia: as we head down from wooded country into agricultural district in search of an old style koupák to swim in, I spot a billboard left over from the election campaign - probably paid for by the Social Democrats - slagging rising new parties TOP09 and Public Affairs (VV), by warning that popular TOP09  figurehead Karel Schwarzenberg will soon by given the chop by ruthless, much less popular TOP deputy leader Miroslav Kalousek. VV leader Radek John is also there in dark glasses, looking vaguely goonish.

In reality, post-election Mr - or, in fact, I should say Prince - Schwarzenberg seems to be quietly slipping out of the limelight of his own accord to get on with the business of running Czech diplomacy as Foreign Minister, and the thought of Radek John, now Interior Minister, as sinister backroom operating would make anyone smile given his bumbling and incompetent first month in office: his floundering performance in a TV interview struggling to explain what his ministry's strategy director did is already the stuff of legend.

The local elections scheduled for October also seem to throwing up some fascinating contests: all eyes are currently on the Alien Versus Predator type battle between the Civic Democrats and TOP09  that is taking shape in Prague, but in Zlín the long, long central boulevard of hypermarkets, industrial units and public building is replete with billboards for a new movement of local independents called Moral Clean-Up for City Hall (MOR), which despite the name seem to be a standard outfit of anti-politically minded worthies not a group of Christian fundamentalists: on the other hand, where does a scratch list of civic minded citizens get hold of the cash for a 30  billboards?  Not to mention a snazzz and professional webiste. The regional daily Zlínský deník said that MOR was 'funded by another electoral list' - presumably as some kind of spolier party'  - producing howls of protest for the new group, but hard information seems hard to come by.

Czech Far Right Has-Bean

Sládek as Bean 

After a long period of exam season induced hibernation - if that's the right word in the summer - I've completed a conference paper for a workshop on populism The Czech Republicans 1990-1998: Rise and Fall of Populist Radical Right Outsider Party. Not the most entertaining or easy bunch in Czech political history to write about and, as I argue in the paper, very much a part of the short 2-3 year interregnum that followed the immediate aftermath of the Velvet Revolution when all kinds of weird and wonderful parties - Moravian regionalists as a major force, who remembers that? - took the stage in a colourful, but misleading overture to Czech politics proper.


Thankfully, I now no longer need to sit in an overheated office reading the collected works of Miroslav Sládek, the Czech Republic own short-lived would-be Jean Marie Le Pen (and Mr Bean look-a-like: does Rowan Atkinson appreciate his contribution to anti-rascism in the Czech Republic, I wonder?) and occasionally watching strutting his stuff videos of grainy far-right rants in Old Town Square on You Tube. Should you feel, you've been missing out you can watch a bit of Czech political history below: a rather small crowd for a national rally by an up and coming radical right movement (as it was then).

Many thanks to Kevin Deegan-Krause for digging out the above  photomontage from his personal archive
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Czech elections: How I got it wrong (again) - and why

The Czech election have happened and as soon as the exit polls came in, it was clear something pretty unusual had happened. When the results came in the Social Democrats 'had won', but both big parties' score were way down on what had been predicted on unexpected and pretty much historic lows: the Social Democrats on 22.1%, the Civic Democrats on 20.2%. The big winners were the two new reformist centre-right parties TOP09 on 16.7% and Public Affairs (VV) on 10.9 who came close to pushing the Communists (KSČM) into fifth. In the end, however, KSČM - the only sure thing in Czech politics these days - pulled in 11.27%, a bad (-1.5%) but not a disasterous result. It was a bad election for small parliamentary parties: the Greens as widely expected were wiped out and - as also anticipated, but much more momentously- the Christian Democrats also fell below the 5% threshold and are out of parliament for the first time since 1990 and - in wider historical perspective taking into account the communist period (when they were a satellite party) and the pre-communist period - perhaps more than century.

Small left-wing parliamentary parties - the Citizens Rights Party - Zemanites of ... can you guess? .... former Social Democratic PM Miloš Zeman and the Sovereignty bloc of former news presenter Jana Bobošiková - neither of which were given much of chance before the election, both polled unexpectedly well: 4.33% and 3.67% - enough for annual state funding - although this wasn't enough for the mecurial Zeman who promptly resigned as leader of his own personal party. He was shortly joined by Christian Democrat Cyril Svoboda and Jiří Paroubek, who led the Social Democrats for the first time in ages to a worse-than-expected parliamentary election results - although without quite hitting the 8% managed by Vladimír Špidla in the 2004 European elections.

And, if I was head of the Czech Politics Pundits Party, I too would resign, because as you will gather, I was badly wrong in my forecast (again). However, mistakes can be instructive, so let' go over how I got it wrong. I predicted

Social Democrats 27%

Civic Democrats 23%
Communists 13.5 - 14.0%
TOP09 12%
VV 8%
Christian Democrats 6%

My first main mistake was to assume - perhaps thinking of how British voters behaved earlier this month - was that new parties support would be less than that in the polls and that established parties somewhat greater. My assumption was that new parties new found popularity was fairly flakey and that some of their supporters either wouldn't turn out to vote or would make a better-the-devil-you-know choice at the polls and opt in the end for an established parties. So Mistake No 1. was to underestimate the frustration of Czech voters and to overestimate the underlying appeal of established parties. A very West European error.

This led to two smaller errors: Mistake No. 2 was to overestimate the core electorate of historic parties such as the Communists - who lost votes in both relative and absolute terms - and the Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL), who did indeed fall below the 5% threshold. Interestingly, the gambler in me got this one right - I staked 10 euros on them crashing our of parliament winning have a princely four - while the more cautious blogging political scientist didn't. Mistake No. 3 was to discount the prospects of small left-wing parties, despite the fact that polls showed at least one (SPOZ) creeping up in the polls to 3-4 per cent.

Overall, I show (as ever) a lack of political imagination - or an engrained sense of disbelief - about likely changes. Borrowing from the trends picked Kevin Deegan-Krause's poll analysis, I at least see that both main parties are not going to suffer a dip in support, but what I failed to see is that far from rowing back from these trends being , in the actual results conistent of these trends writ very, very large indeed. A bit of imagination and the Deegan Krause analysis and you could have been there.

Regional poll suggests Czech Christian Democrats face electoral oblivion

Lidovci příliš nezáří ani na jihu Moravy - ve své tradiční baště reports ČT24, the Czech CNN (as if). Translated this means that the Czech Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL) are - according to regional polling - down to a grim six percent even in their historic bastion of South Moravia. They polled 11% of the vote there in 2006 election but nationally only just made it over the 5% threshold, this poll suggests their electoral support may be halved and, come parliamentary elections at the end of next month, they will go the way of the Hungarian KNDP and other small Christian parties in CEE - down the electoral plughole. With mass organization, tradition and some deeply embedded support in Catholic regions, they couldn't totally be written off even as an extra-parliamentary party, but like the KNDP in the end they will end up simply as a building bloc for other alliance. Bad news for the Czech right in the short-term: if KDU-ČSL flops so do their slim chances of a parliamentary majority, but their demise would exactly not great news for the Social Democrats either, wiping from the political map a moderate, stable, pro-European grouping with a genuine commitment to a social market, leaving them more reliant than they might like to be. The culprits are, of course, the new TOP09 party headed up by Habel confidante Prince Karel Schwarzenberg and various, pragmatic pro-market Christian Democrat defectors such as Miroslav Kalousek. In the end, they might I guess find their way into the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) creating a broader based right - TOP09 is almost unashamedly openly a short-term vehicle and ODS current stand-in leader Petr Nečas is a practicing Catholic who can do social conservatism. If, of course, ODS does not desend into factional conflict there is a Civic Democatic Party left for them to make their way into. I suppose they will just have to wait for Václav Klaus to descend from the heavens (or at least the battlements of Prague Castle) and save them.

Shock horror - Czech Social Democrat leader once a Socialist, then a moderate

I have been sent convincing proof that Czech Social Democrat leader Jiří Paroubek was in 1989 a functionary of the satellite Czechoslovak Socialist Party (ČSS) (above right) and gave an interview to the ČSS newspaper saying nice things about Victorious February, the Communist takeover of 28 February 1948, which saw the secular liberal-nationalist National Socialists - a stalwart of the progressive intelligenstsia in interwar Czechoslovakia and close to President Beneš broken and transformed into feeble, fellowing travelling appedage of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (some historians argue that this was the Nationalist Socialist own fault for misreading the political situation and indulging in nationalism and populism, rather than sticking to their own more liberal traditions, but that's another story).

Should we be shocked? Answer no - I am, alas, as you know, not the Perez Hilton of CEE political bloggers, and this is, frankly underwhelming news. Allthough omitted from his official online CV, Paroubek's membership of ČSS has been known for years and he can (if he can bothered) argue that he did not join Communist Party and sought through ČSS to promote some kind of political change. He joined in 1970. ČSS did have some contacts with left-wing Chartists (in Brno - not Prague where Paroubek was based) and, in fairness, the party did quickly jumpeship from the regime during the Velvet Revolution - its newspaper Svobodné slovo was one of the first to open report events. Havel's famous speech in Wenceslas Square was delivered from the balcony of the Socialist Party's publishing house, Melantrich. That might in many ways be a feeble argument - satellite parties were a powerless moribund facade organizations, but then Paroubek did leave in 1986, so he probably worked that out and correctly saw that satellite were not likely to be major vehicles for change in Gorbachev-era CEE. He had a middle management role in catering enterprise and later deputy director a footwear company - not quite 'top managment' mentioned in his official CV, but it made him small enough fry for the secret police to dismiss him as a potential informer.

In 1990 Paroubek showed a certain amount of foresight - and ambition - in joining the newly revived Social Democrat Party (ČSSD), re-founded by ageing exiles. Despite it wealth and a certain pedigree, the Socialist Party was obviously going nowhere politically after 1989, as historic brand of nationalism and liberalism was too sui generis to recreate in contemporary Czechoslovakia and the party basically stood for nothing. (Other Socialist Party functionaries joined the Moravian regionalists.) As he was relatively young. capable and not an exile Paroubek quickly rose to become the Social Democrats' General Secretary - reading through the party's history in the early years after 1989 as a PhD student I remember he was a constant presence - however, ČSSD's notalgic harping back to the 1940s, hostility to former communists and refusal to criticize market reforms (backed by Paroubek who truly was Mr Moderation at this time) made the party a flop. Only with the recruitment of reform communists and a more confrontational policy of speaking up for transition losers in blunt and populist terms did the party get anyway, finally making an electoral breakthorough in 1996 under Miloš Zeman (who joined in 1992 and bear Paroubek to the leadership in 1993). I

If anyone is scouring old newsppers, they should dig out some of Paroubek's anti-Zeman quotes, because of course, after more than a decade out of national politics doggedly establishing himself faute de mieux as a figure in Prague politics - including a stint in a Grand Coalition with the right in the nation's capital- Paroubek returns: first as Minister of Local Development, then as hard-talking populist saviour of the Social Democrats when the party went into electoral and political after being routed in the 2004 Euro-elections. These, as we all know, days Paroubek out-Zemans Zeman (now also returned to politics with his own mini-grouping the Party of Citizens Rights) for being a high profile populist bulldozer, who understands that sound bites in defence of welfare and public spending are the way to win a Czech election

I doubt any of Paroubek's potential voters will care about a bit of ideological waffle from 1980s - or, indeed all that dead-end moderation of the early 1990s.

1917 - Austro-Hungarian propaganda.

Someone, who like me has Czech inl aws, passes me a blog link to some Czech language 1917 - Austro-Hungarian propaganda. Small wonder thisThrone and Altar stuff never held Austria-Hungary together, although some Catholic relative seems to have kept it as a family heirloom, rather outdoing my wife's Moravian relatives who never seem to have shared such religiosity and been bigger fans of the First Czechoslovak Republic. I suppose the Habsburg Empire would be a hard sell even for the best spin doctors, although I expect these days they'd be stressing its single market, lack of borders and common currency. A century on package tours, cheap air travel and well stocked hypermarkets are what unite the peoples of the former Dual Monarchy (and the rest of Europe). Progess of a kind a guess, but in century's time EU prospectuses about growth, cohesion or peacekeeping discovered on some antique hard drive might seen equally quaint and forlorn.

Easter Holiday diary

It's family holiday time in the Czech Republic. The neighbouring out-of-town high rise estates where my in-laws have improved slightly in some respects as some grey brutalist communist-era towersblocks have been insulated and refaced with a splash of pastel colours in the years following EU membership, althhough such refurbishment now seems to have slowed. There is also a very nice 'muti-generational playground' with a pirate theme just near the local football pitch, which - innovatbively - even has an exercise corner for seniors although there were no pensioners in evidence and precious few kids around on the cold Sunday morning we were there. The local mayor is a leading light on the Greens regional list for the forthcoming eletions, I was interested to discover. She doesn't seem to be have been able to have done much about the ubiquitous graffiti on every available wall and dogshit on every availablle grass verge though. What's the Czech for pooper scooper?

....

Traipsing between tower blocks is no fun, so we quickly drive off to country. Having invested a 40 minutes being passed from queue to queue and counter to counter in the local post-office to buy a 10 day motorway vignette, we take full advantage of the empty, new motorway to Kroměřiž - part of slow, corrupt and not-likely-to-be-completed-any-time-somm road expansion and upgrading programme. The proverbial road to nowhere.

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The kids eat ice cream sundae in spa town of Luhačovice. I have backache and want to buy some ibuprofen. This means locating the local pharmacy, as the idea that so much as an aspirin on sale anywhere is anathama. Eventually, I get there and get a packet for three times the price they would cost at my local Tesco in England. Frustrating? Not half. With the collapsing pound, the Czech Republic is expensive as well as rather overregulated by British standards. Apparantly, Czech pharmacies have fought an effective rearguard lobbying action to hang on to their retail monpoly. On the other hand, perhaps I am too quick to think it is a basic human right to buy anything at knock down prices at the nearesr hypermarket.

My holiday reading, The Spirit Level, does a good job of popularizing academic finding that more equal market democracies have a better quality of life and fewer social and health problems - although I am less convinced by some of the evolutionary pyschology about status anxiety used to fillin the blanks and policy recommendations are the end some fairly tired and unimginative social democratic prescriptions like employer share ownership, co-operatives and municipal enterprises- worthy and probably quite effective, but frankly the political equivalent of a dose of ibuprofen.

Time was I knew the bookshops of Brno like the back of my hand. These days, however, I hardly ever stick my nose over the threshold of a knihkupectví, but instead spend a lot of time at zoos, children's theatre and riding the city's public transport system with my tram-crazy offspring. Today, we head to the Divadlo Polarka to see a performace of the classic Czech (well, izvinytye actually Russian) children's favourite Mrazík. The theatre foyer is packed with surpisingly unruly school groups, who make up the children's theatre's clientele, supervised by an implausibly small number of teachers, who are good deal less fierce and imposing than the dragon remembered by wife from the 1970s when kids had to say 'Yes, comrade' instead of 'Yes miss' in class. Coincidently, Czech news magazine Respekt reports that Czech parenting has become considerly more liberal since the mid-1990s, leaving schools struggling to cope with more loud and assertive generatio ns of kids, who are a whole lot less cowed by authority.

Eventually, we get a seat - although it is 10am in the morning and the second performance of the day - the Polarka's actors put in a fantastic performance with perfectly co-ordinated music, acrobatics, rapid scene changes and great story telling that knocks the average English panto into a cocked hat.

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Brno zoo is a bit of a disappointment, but the new refurbished Anthropological museum Anthropos with its papier mache cave people and life-sized model mammoth is a much more interesting proposition.

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Czech flag turns 90 - or does it?

Czech radio reports on its website that the Czech flag turns 90 today, having been designed in 1920. However, while the design of the flag may indeed have entered its ninth decade, for most of that time it was the flag of Czechoslovakia, red and white being the traditional colours of Bohemia, while the blue wedge was added to represent Slovakia. It was only taken over as the Czech flag when the Czechoslovak federation split up and the Czech Republic and Slovakia became independent states, making the Czech flag more of an upstart teenage than a venerable old banner.

Interestingly, Moravian and Silesia - the two other historic provinces that make up the Czech lands don't , iconographically speaking, didn't seem get a look in, perhaps because they were rather disapproved of politically in 1918 - the new state was supposed to be an expression of national statehood, not an assemblage of Habsburg provinces. The Czech Republic's coat of arms does now, however, makes up for this by adding Moravian and Silesian eagles to the Bohemia lion (right).

Howver, in these days of political and social malaise - although perhaps you should treat that assertion with caution as, if you believe, the commenatators Czech politics and society are in a permanent state of malaise - some national rerebranding and an alternative national flag might be in order. This is the kind of topic that engages British bloggers, who have spotted that the Union Jack might need a makeover if Scotland goes independent, but doesn't seem to have come up in a Czech context even during the Czecho-Slovak split.

So what would the options be? Officially, the Czech Republic's flag in 1990-2 as a constituent part of a newly democratized Czechoslovak Federation was a rather unfetching red and white (right) easily confused with the Polish one, which also served as the Czechoslovak flag in 1918-20, so that was clearly a non-starter. A few far-right Czech bloggers want a black, red and white one with echoes of the Imperial Germany and on the same theme the wartime Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia had a non-descript red-blue-white tricolour (above left), but we don't think we want to go there. At the time of the Czecho-Slovak split in 1992, Czech politicians did promise not to use the old Czechoslovak flag for the independent CR, but to revisit some of the rejected designs from 1919-20. However, as most of these echo the flags of Panama, Texas or some kind anarcho-syndicalist banner, it's not surprising they went back on their word and stuck to Jaroslav Kursa's classic 1920 design - pragmatism is one of many Czech virtues. The best of a not very good selection of proposed Czechoslovak flags of 1918 the period for my money is probably the sweeping asymetric tricolour opposite (left) but to today's eye that looks far too much the kind of thing you might see flying over the Kremlin, so it looks like the Czechs will just have to stick to the one they have after all.

Perhaps they should call on David Černý of Entropa fame to do the next one?

Exit Topolánek followed by a geek?

So in the end, Czech Civic Democrat leader Miroslav Topolánek met the same fate as the hands of his more illustrious predecessor Václav Klaus - booted out by regions for electoral failure. Only this being Topolánek it more clumsy, disasterous and bathetic than the elegant failures and climdowns that mark the lower points of Mr Klaus's career. While Klaus has the good sense to read the runes and step down in 2002, the maladroit Topolánek suffered the indignity of a massive vote against him in the ODS executive summarily removing him from the top of the party's South Moravian list and role as the party's national 'electoral leader' for the campaign. And, of course, Topolánek has been ousted weeks before an election not weeks after one - an impressive act of collective political courage (or desperation) by ODS intended to stem the party's slide in the polls and loss of support to small new pro-reform parties.

The last straw seems to have been one of Topolánek's characteristic foot-in-mouth remarks referring the Jewish background of caretaker Prime Minister Fischer - ironically the remarks were made in an interview with Lui magazine for gay men in a fumbling, bumbling effort to emphasize how unprejudiced he was: reading the transcript it might just be the case that Topolánek is talking hypothetical remarks about the lack of resolve and toughness of members of the current caretaker government (one of whom is openly gay - a rarity in Czech politics) and how it's really just a matter of personality ('...Fischer. He's not gay, he's simply Jewish and he backs off. It's character') . However, a (more out of context) video of the remarks suggests that he is straightfowardly linking lack blokish political determination is a consequence of Jewishness or homosexuality.

What ever the truth of, it's appearances that count in politics. - and frankly what kind of an idiot politically would launch into any kind of off-the-cuff remarks about the Jewish background. Well, Topolánek that's who.

It now seems a matter of time before Topolánek formally steps down as leader and disappears into the political shadows. His replacement as 'electoral leader' is Petr Necas, one time Labour and Social Affairs Minister, spokesman for intellectually minded social conservative sin ODS and leadership contender in 2002 (when he was endorsed by Vaclav Klaus and lost out in a narrow three-way contest). Necas is experienced, respectable and a safe pair of hands - certainly not the kind of person likely to be caught with penis on public display on Silvio Berlusconi's poolside - and known for his dull worthiness. Leadership rival Jan Zahradil bluntly termed him a nerd (suchar) - or perhap 'geek' is a better translation - in 2002.

Such anti-charisma is being plugged by some Czech political pundits as likely to blunt the electoral attacks of both like TOP09 alternative right-wing parties and the Social Democrats both of whom were to some extent running against Topolánek, although the Social Democrats' big welfare/big stimulus message seems likely to play well whoever leads ODS and I personally am sceptical that a bet on John Major-like dullness will pay off, a fact Necas himself seems to have grasped by trying to show his macho side, telling us that sometimes he does lose his temper and threatening to pull ODS nominated ministers out of the caretaker technocrat government in last few pre-election weeks.

A political obituary for Topolánek? He's the man who held ODS post-Klaus, defined belatedly and for a more pragmatic, ecologically-minded realistic pro-market centre-right politics in the CR; and saw off Klaus and got the Lisbon Treaty ratified by the Czech parliament. A more substantive and interesting political figure than the gaffes, vulgar slips, lack of media polish, messy personal life for which he is likely to be remember. His greatest political failure was not to be an electoral winner in 2006, not to hold his minority government together in the spotlight of the EU Presidency. The greatest bit of bad luck of this famously lucky politican was the postponement of the scheduled early election of 2009 by the Czech Constitutional Court. After this Topolánek's judgement and taste for politics seem to have deserted him, until he was mowed down by his own party.

You wonder, however, if any leader of ODS can ever really win an election in a meaningful sense ever again. After all every Czech elections since 1996 has seen the Social Democrats do better than expected, either by winning or do better than expected in defeat. Why should 2010 be any different?

And what one wonder would electoral defeat presage for the now very diverse Czech centre-right?

Traces of nuts may be detectable

The mildy controversial article Tim Bale, Aleks Szczerbiak and I wrote for Political Quarterly about the British Tories and their East European allies in the new European Conseravtives and Reformers Group (ECR) European Parliament has just appeared - interested readers based in universities with an institutional subscription to PQ might like to click through here. Otherwise, friends and colleagues, please feel free to drop me an email to ask for an electronic offprint.

The new ECR group, however, looks a bit more shaky than it might have done a few months ago, if the recent interview with Civic Democrat faction leader in the EP Miroslav Ouzký, who pulls no punches in telling Czech news magazine Respekt that the leaving the European People's Party was a bad move, depriving his party of political clout and was the brainchild of arch-eurosceptic and one time Klaus protege, Jan Zahradil (now the Vice-Chair of ECR). The ECR's dependence on small one MEP parties, Ouzký says - as we too argued in the article (seealso an East European oriented presentation I did on the subject last year fwith some figures) leaves it vulnerable to collapse.

My co-author, Tim Bale, is also author of new book on the British Tories, which he describes here in a podcast on the Bookhugger site. I had a small enabling role here, as it was recording in my office: a fact obvious by default for anyone who knows it in that Tim is seated in front of the only area not cluttered with untidy piles of books, papers and coffee cups: the space-age window-cum-porthole which sometimes leaves me feeling more like Major Tom than Dr Sean.

Conservatively speaking

The paper on Czech conservatism in Liblice has now appeared in a conference paper archive on the website of the Henrich Boell Foundation, who jointly sponsored the event with the Institute for Contemporary History in Prague. There are also some much better and more interesting papers alongside.

What I wonder would the English Greens call their foundation - if, of course, they had the cash and the votes to create one, of course?

Update: The broken hyperlink the papers originally posted has now been fixed.

Flexible friends

SSEES is visited by two members of the much re-constituted but officially legendary Plastic People of the Universe, the underground rock groups whose trial in 1976 spurred the formation of Charter 77: Vratislav Brabenec, one of the founding originals, and Eva Turnová who has been the Plastics' bass guitarist since 2001. As this is, in Czech dissident terms, the equivalent of a royal visit, the current Czech ambassador to the UK, translator, Havel confidante, one-time politician - he led the Civic Democratic Alliance in its terminal breakdown phase in 1997-8, but enough of that - Michal Žantovský introduces proceedings in Masaryk Common Room. He sensibly sticks to water, leaving the red wine to the visiting Plastíci, chipping in the occasional translation, but like the good diplomat he is otherwise listens and doesn't say much.

An array of armchairs and Peter Zusi's relaxed and informal moderation give the event something of the feeling of an intellectual chatshow and we get a variety of observations and recollections: how the group was named after a Frank Zappa song, but, Brabenec later discovered, in exile in Canada slightly suggested the flexibility of a talking credit credit in aTV ad;
how records were smuggled in and traded on black market burzy in the woods near Prague in 1970s and 80s; how musicians made amps from electrical hobby kits; how boring the 1976 trial was; how capitalism is indeed the same as communism; how Brabenec fell over into middle of a performance at the National Theatre, but was forgiven.

The final question, from the Masaryk Society's Michael Tate, who has brilliantly organized both this event and the Plastics' concert in London at the South Bank in January, asks whether the group has not become too disneyfied as kitsch cultural icon. But it's late in the evening and they need a cigarette, so all we get from Brabebc is a rather zen answer to the effect that the group's credo is "Don't be Stupid" - which would also make a good slogan for a university, I thought. Eva Turnová more straightfowardly explains that they are somewhat allergic to ageing hippies, who remember the group from 1970s and prefer to play for young people and international audiences. She can speak Chinese.

Brabenec was also interviewed this morning on the radion in the slightly unlikely venue of the BBC's Midweek programme - listenable here.

Update: Tom Stoppard who was in the audience at the event (note to self: he was probably the bloke with the white manbag) and has played a big role in enabling the Plastics' gig at the South Bank - has written a profile of the band and its music in the Times.

Sweet 'n' sour legacy of the Czech EU Presidency

A sad little footnote to the Czech Presidency of the EU. Právo reports that three tonnes of sugar lumps complete with individual wrappings with Czech Presidency logo and slogan - We'll Sweeten Europe (if only, but a Czech did invent the sugar lump in 1843), y'know - are now left over at government ministries in Prague. Czech civil servants may have to put up with all manner of cutbacks, but at least they can rot their teeth having their coffee and tea as sickly sweet as they like...

Klaus relents on Lisbon - but how far?

Today's Times reports that Václav Klaus has relented - or is about to relent - and will sign the Lisbon Treaty in the coming weeks if some Irish-style deal to assuage his concerns about possible legal challenges to the 1945-6 Beneš Decrees expelling and expropriating Czechoslovakia's three million strong ethnic German minority under the Charter of Fundamental Rights which forms part of the Treaty are specifically ruled out.

The report is on an interview with Klaus published in Lidové noviny two days earlier in which VK makes clear he doesn't want a new Treaty that would have to be re-ratified by all 27 member states; that he 'cannot and will not wait for the British elections' even though David Cameron wrote to him in July urging him to do so (or, actually, in Mr Klaus's careful phrasing the letter'more or less suggests something to this effect (více méně neco v tomto duchu naznačuje) '; as you might guess the letter did not say 'Hang in there, Václav' or something to that effect). Most importantly, the interview conceeds that the Treaty will come into force because 'the train has picked up such speed that it cannot now be stopped or turned back...' but it is not the end of history: 'the dispute over freedom and democracy in Europe will surely continue. It must continue, otherwise things will turn out very badly for us'. Lutta continua.

But check out carefully what he says, or rather doesn't say. He doesn't say he will sign the Treaty or even mention himself signing it. This might, of course, be simple facing saving. The iimage of Europe's arch eurosceptic and last man standing putting his name to the hated document may simple be too much to put into words, especially for those who make up Klaus's (now rather limited) domestic political base. It is perfectly conceivable, however, that the President himself is pragmatic and hardheaded enough to do having stood out against it as Last Man Standing and dragged out final ratification for a few more months. Klaus has in the past been prepared to do pragmatic deals with domestic political opponents including the Czech Republic's reviled Communist Party, so why not with the rest of Europe? In the interview, he certainly realistically - and for the first time - accepts that Treaty is likely to come into force. Perhaps he has made an assessment that the countries main parties will get their act together and sink their differences sufficiently to constitutionally strip him of some powers, if he holds out too long. His departure as leader of ODS in 2002 showed a similar sudden pragmatism when he realised the odds had clearly shifted against him.

The five question interview i(no probing interrogation, this; more of a brief audience) however, a classic piece of Klaus position shifting (he accepts the Treaty will probably come into force) combined with well crafted ambiguities that seem to say one thing, but - on closer reading - don't actually. Domestically, will he actually sign the Treaty or perhaps negotiate for some form of ratification without his signature? There is, as mentioned, a view (and a fewlegal precedents) for legislation and international agreements coming into force without a presidential signature? He is and will not be waiting for the British elections (consciously or a tactic) but what if things happen to end up dragging out that long anyway despite VK's newly reasonable and realistic views as confided to Lidové noviny ? The Czech Constitutional Court needs to rule (decision slated for 27 October and it can (although probably won't) surprise, the EU's politicians still have to negotiate a quick fix to Klaus's objections at their summit. Will they be quick enough? Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico has already suggested that it the Czechs get a Beneš Decrees opt-out, well, darn it, the Slovaks want one too. Cue Slovak-Hungarian difficulties.

Perhaps Klaus will end up with his opt-opt signed, sealed and quickly delivered on on a plate, but 'end up' is really the key word here: Klaus is taking things move-by-move playing his way through an end game in a match that he knows he will probably lose, waiting for a sudden slip-up by tied opponents or a sudden turn of events which will generate a position that no one anticipatied

The interview - and,what it seems to say - is also a brilliant tactical move in deflating the mounting Europe-wide and domestic pressure, winning a brathing space and putting opponents off guard.

Checkmate in how many moves?

Czech Republic and Lisbon: The wisdom of crowds?

Anyone in any doubt about the mobilising power of the Lisbon Treaty as an issue in the Czech Republic should check out the size of the crowds in the recent demonstrations (for and against President Klaus) outside Prague Castle.