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 - thana 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.
I'm sitting in my parents-in-laws sixth floor flat in Brno with a glass of my father-in-law's red wine at one elbow and Czech-English dictionary at the other. Having spent all summer finishing various conference papers at short notice, I've been a conference on 20 Years of Czech Democracy at Masaryk University in Brno. We have an interesting first panel discussion of pinpointing the reasons for stability and longevity of the Czech party system; learn how the Czech Social Democrats have terrific and well focused political marketing and how Czech voting is stably class-based and generating right-wing suburbs on the periphery of Prague and Brno, while those left in the city centres toy with various centrist and populist parties. I disagree with the keynote address which frames Czech democracy in terms of democratic consolidation, admittedly broadly conceived. I think we should starting thinking about democratic quality and how well democracy works, not bracketing the CR with Serbia
While all this is going on the Czech parliament is passing an amendment to the Constitution allow it dissolve itself - the Constitutional Court ("the last guarantee of democracy" as one of my fellow panelists - possibly ironically - put it) which is practically next door to the Faculty of Social Studies where we are conferencing had struck down the previous one-off constitutional law shorterning the parliamentary term, so they have to pass a sensible general amendent along the lines they should have published years ago. Early elections postponed from October to November. Or so we thought.
Today brings the news that the Social Democrats don't want early elections at all, despite what they spent the last nine months saying. So terrified are they of the possibility of another successful challenge in the Constitutional Court to the latest amendment that they helped pass that they would rather the current caretaker government of technocrats formed in May continued for another nine months when scheduled elections can take place. Oh, and the technocrats will also get to make swingeing cuts to balance the budger including 3% salary cuts for public sector employees. The fine Social Democrat marketing campaign to be promisng decent living standards for ordinaty people wound up. Parliament isn't to be dissolved. The inter-party pact between the main parties of left and right that brought the caretaker government into exisitence is null and void. Topolnek resigns as a deputy in protest, pointlessly and rather riskily I thought. The technocrats in the 'non-political' government - whose leverage is increasing by the minute - want a new one to give them a democratic mandate (of sorts) but will only agree go on if they are allowed to rein in the budget deficit and cut public spending.
'Politologové jsou zaskočeni' the TV news says. Damn right we are. We should have been discussing issues of consensus, competition and the problem of building stable majorities yesterday, not waxing lyrical about the institutionalization of parties, although I suppose their stability as individual organizations add to the instability (or perhaps I should call that finely balanced nature) of the Czech party system . The current turn of events poses some pretty sharp questions about the Czech model of democracy and readiness with which politicians can chop and change the rules of the game when they put their minds to it and, having created in political system in which parties rule the roost, flee from government in times of economic crisis and hand over to a team of technocrats for a year does have a whiff of South America or Serbia about it.
I am going to another conference on the 1989 next. Unwise in many ways, as I am not a historian, but perhaps safer in some as the dull certainties of Czech political crisi management seem to be collapsing around us. The next 20 hours of Czech democracy are a lot harder to understand than last last 20 years
Javno.com reports that the Croatian Pensioners' Party (HSU) have quit the ruling coalition. As they have one deputy that may not make much immediate different but seems is an interesting and direct impact of financial crunch, which has moved down the headlines recently - at least in relation to Eastern Europe.
"ZAGREB, CROATIA 24 July 2009 - The president of the Croatian Pensioners’ Party (HSU) Silvano Hrelja announced today that the party was leaving the leading coalition. In a conversation for Javno.com, Hrelja revealed that HSU will now join the opposition parties in a battle against the Cabinet’s tricks.
HSU reminds that on Thursday they sent a clear message to the Cabinet that they will not accept a larger tax than the one agreed upon, and that they accept the Cabinet taxing only the difference for amounts over three thousand kuna, at a maximum rate of three percent. “Considering that the Cabinet did not find the calculation to plug the hole in the budget, they later said that they need to tax the entire amount of all of the salaries and pensions that surpass three thousand kuna, we considered the negotiations over. This sort of burden would mean nearly a four times larger burden for workers and pensioners” say sources from HSU. They consider that the latest Cabinet proposal to also be unacceptable, considering that it is considerable less favourable than the one they had already agreed upon.
“Considering that the Cabinet was at least nine months late to react, and considering that the Minister of Finance Ivan Suker has been deceiving not only the media, and coalition partners, but the whole Croatian public, HSU has brought the unanimous decision to leave the coalition, defending our reputation and continuing the fight for the rights of Croatian pensioners” it says in the report by the central HSU committee, which also seeks the resignation of the Minister of Finance."
Having missed out the chance of TV stardom on the BBC Euro-election results programme - half of SSEES seem to have been rung up by various BBC researchers looking for a pundit on Eastern Europe (in the end they did without one) - I can't resist a brief bit of instant(ish) analysis.
The story as generally reported from a West European perspective is that centre-right incumbents have heldon; the centre-left - opposition or incumbent - has not made expected gains against the background of global recession and social insecurity; Greens, the far right and the anti-market left made modest gains, scooping what there was in the way of Europe-wide radical protest electorate.
A quick glance suggests that CEE suggests that region looses mirrors this trend: only Robert Fico's Smer in Slovakia (as ever) has really bucked trend of social democratic under performance. Most surprisingly for me -was the performance of the Czech Civic Democrats who managed to avoid the predicted photo finish with the Social Democrats and win the Czech euro-election comfortably with 32% of the vote. The Czech Social Democrats (ODS), however, recovered from the electoral meltdown of 2004 and pulled in a more than respectable 24%, which should enable them to walk a bit taller in the depleted Socialist Group in Brussles. (They will, I suspect, be rather harder to beat in the October parliamentary elections, but, hey, this is the Czech Republic we're talking about, so the smart money should perhaps be on political deadlock).
However, closer examinations suggests something of parallel narrative in CEE. Indeed, the much discussed erosion of Social Democracy in Western Europe does not seem (as yet) to playing out in the region. Although the Hungarian Socialists were predictably whacked (losing 4 MEPS) and the Estonian social democorats too seem to have lost a seat, other social democratic parties in the region seem to have more or less held their own: as noted, the Czech Social Democrats won't be crying into their beer too much and leaders Slovakia's Smer could reasonably crack open the champagne. The Bulgarian Socialists held their own as did the Romanian and Slovenian social democrats. Even the marginalised post-communist left in Poland has undergone a minor revival.
This may perhaps be because there are few if any centre-left parties in the region can really claim to authentically social democratic. But to my mind the regional disparity seems more to interpretable in terms of CEE's less post-industrial, fragmented and multi-cultural societies posing less acute strategic dilemma.
The grand narrative of social democratic decline/crisis has been academically well set out in Herbert Kitschelt's 1994 classic The Transformation of European Social Democracy and put across in more digestable form by academic commentators such as Simon Hix in commentaries on the Euro elections. The basic story is this: social change, globalization and economic restructuring are generating competition pressures in the political arena as the big centre left parties struggle to cope with the break up of helectoral coalitions that underpinned them: Greens eating into their support among left-liberal public sector professionals, the populist far-right (and in some places workerist radical left) making inroads among working class voters in deindustrialized, credit crunched former heartlands.
Central and Eastern Europe's Greens - never a very strong electoral force - seem again to have bombed entirely. This was in part - but only in part - due to the smaller populations and hence smaller numbers of of MEPs elected in CEE states which raised the effective threshold of votes. But even in a largeish state like the Czech Republic where a mere 5% would have done the trick the Green Party (SZ) failed. The SZ gained miserable 2%, as internicine factional infighting seemed at last to have taken an electoral toll - although cynics will note that the political support of Václav Havel, which always turns out to the kiss of political death for any new party.
To get back to centre-left, CEE social democrats have it a little easier. They face little competition from eco-liberal parties - whose support is small and would probably not have gone to them in the first place - leaving economic populists and anti-establishment novelty parties as the main challenge. There is also perhaps a larger constituency demanding social protection making brusingly pro-welfare positions a safer political bet (at least when campaigning in elections). There is, I suppose, less of 'core vote' to fall back - the Czech Social Democrats' vote, for example, has rollercoasted wildly over the past decades despite the engrained social market preferences of a huge chunk of the Czech population - but in sense the lack of one is perhaps almost an advantage. After all, what you don't have can't be eroded.
I am fed up being rung up by journalists and asked about the far-right in CEE, so I'm not going so say much about this particular dog that doesn't bark (much) Given the very healthy vote for the Front National, Danish People's Party, Austrian Freedom Party, Dutch Freedom Party and, of course, and our own BNP, I am eagerly awaiting Polish and Hungarian journalists getting onto the phone up to ask wave of right-wing extremism of sweeping Western Europe threatens democracy in the region.
The centre-right Topolánek government, recently toppled in a vote of no confidence the Czech Republic, and now replaced by caretaker government of technocrats and worthies at least goes out a bright(ish) note, having managed to get the Lisbon Treaty ratified by the Czech Senate. In the end, an unexpectedly large minority of the Civic Democrat (ODS) senators (12) backed the Treaty, while 20 against and it passed with the required 2/3 majority with one vote to spare (supported by 54 of the 79 legislators present). This was good news for supporters of the Treaty, but probably bad news for ODS underlining the split in the party over European issues that seems to dividie it down the middle. One prominent ODS deputy has already quit the party in protest. And, of course, we're not out of the Treary ratification woods yet. President Klaus seems likely to find all kinds of pretexts not to sign it, not least the fact that he doesn't agree with it.
The vote also highlighted divisions in the Czech Communist Party (KSČM): two of whose three senators voted against, while one voted for. However, for them Lisbon is more of pragmatic call than the cause celebre it is on the right.
One of the parting acts of the Topolánek government was also to give a big publicity plug to its lesser known legacies to Czech politics: the National Anti-Crisis Plan (NPP) and the National Economic Council (NERV) of economic experts it set up February to deal with the impact of the global recession on the CR. In form NERV is one of plethora of technocratic-cum-representative government advisory bodies covering everything from Roma integration to EU policy and the ageing population, but clearly greater things are expected of it. Along with the new caretaker government, it should afford a bit of political cover for whatever consensus the major parties can scrap together on managaing the economic crisis.
The campaign itself is, however, rather feeble even by Czech public information standards with the usual billboard cast of typical social types (Worker, Pensioner, Self-Employed Person etc) and the bathetic slogan: 'We've got a solution' (Máme řešení). I suppose that might be more naturally rendered into English as 'We're dealing with it'- and in a break with tradition the overall-clad plumber or carpenter depicted is a woman- but even then... It also has rather odd echos of the 2006 Communist election campaign slogan - KSČM campaigning is also known for its sparkle and pazazz - 'We're got a different different solution' (Máme jiné rešení). The National Anti-Crisis Plan also has a website, which goes under the more snappy if very paternalistic moniker http://www.podrzimevas.cz/, which I guess translates as something like BackingYou.cz.
And for those who can face more writing by me, there's a short piece in Chatham House's World Today magazine on the possible political consequences of the global economic crisis in Central and Eastern Europe. Journalists and economists were making all the running on this - and sometimes not very good running, I felt - so I thought I stick my oar.The piece is downloadable here until the end of May, longer if you are a CH member. As one of my colleagues has already pointed out, I underestimate the extent to which the crisis will push CEE elites towards support for further European integration even if they feel the need to make populist forays into bashing Sarkozy.
Getting ready for your summer holidays in the CzechRepublic? Perhaps wondering what to take? Sun hat? Sandals? A book? Some hay fever tablets? Good idea. Oh yes and could you perhaps also bring a ‘summer government’ of non-political experts to run the country for next few months. Just while the local politicos pass a quick constitutional law or two and fight it out in early parliamentary elections in October, you understand.
Yes, the main Czech parties have solved the political crisis that followed the collapse of the shaky centre-right minority government by drafting in a team of non-party technocrats to run things from next month until early parliamentary elections in October.Opportunity knocks. You too can be Prime Minister. At least if you are a previously obscure technocrat of a certain age and you haven’t blotted your copybook with any partisan commitments since 1989 (Communist Party membership in 1980s is OK, however: indeed it would tend to emphasize your excellent apolitical technocratic credentials). The interim summertime Prime Minister will therefore be….Jan Fischer the head of the Czech Statistical Office. Come on down.
Fischer is such a grey but respected technocrat, whose high level political experience seems to be confined to sitting on various government advisory boards and fending off efforts to spin embarrassing figures (Communists I have met are invariably convinced that CSO fiddles the figures for political reasons - I suppose they should know). All other ministers in the new government will be high ranking officials or diplomats. It will take a month for this dream team to assemble, however, so the outgoing Topolánek administration gets a final month for its sadly pathetic swansong., so technically speaking following the formal appointment of Fischer as PM last Thursday the CR has two premiers.
The problem is you see under the Czech constitution dissolving parliament to hold early election is not the straightforward business it should be in a country usually incapable of generating stable majority government. Instead of a quick parliamentary vote or stroke of the presidential pen, officially Czech legislators are supposed to try to form a government three times and have threeunsuccessful parliamentary votes and then and only then can the Chamber of Deputies be dissolved. Not surprisingly, as in 1998 the main parties decided to bypass all this and pass a one-off constitutional law bringing elections (scheduled for June 2010) forward to October.
The agreement of a stopgap non-partisan caretaker government was unexpected but is not exactly unfamiliar territory in the CR. Such a “government of officials” (uřednická vláda) is a familiar holding device in Czech politics which date back to 1920s, reflecting a Czech veneration for The Expert (bring in odborník and all discussion ends) A similar caretaker administration under central bank governor Josef Tošovský was formed in 1997 in the wake of the ignominious collapse of an earlier minority right-wing government.Jan Fischer et al get a chance for 15 minutes fame largely the result of a deal between Topolánek and Social Democrat leader Jiri Paroubek, who, while they may be at each other’s throats politically, still know how to do a deal when they need to.
And why did they need to? Well, for the Social Democrats it’s about showing who’s boss and giving the right a good kicking when they’re down. And for Topolánek it’s about showing who isn’t boss by stitching up a deal: President Klaus. He’s got a deal for stable majority-back government signed and sealed before VK can start playing a more active role and floating prime ministerial nominees and projects of his own.
They say the new government will be non-political and non-partisan, but parties are nominating ministers for specific ministries and there’s a certain whiff of a Grand Coalition in the deal that hasn’t pleased everyone. Having initially signed up for it, the two junior partners in the outgoing coalition, the Greens and Christian Democrats have quickly gone off it. Both parties’ executives quickly threw it out demanding - as had been explicitly not agreed - that the Topolánek government continue until the end of the Czech EU Presidency on 30 June.
Very stateperson-like? After all, this latest domestic denouement does put the kibosh on the CzechRepublic’s tottering Presidency of the EU, which still has two months to run. There won’t be any immediate disruption. The Topolánek government continues in a caretaker capacity for another month but is the lamest of lame ducks. And the inexperience and limited shelf life of the caretaker government will finally choke whatever limited capacity the CR once to play a political co-coordinating role at the head of the EU.
Well, no not really, ODS-CSSD collaboration immediately deprives the small parties of power and leverage and given the combined parliamentary and political weight of ODS and CSSD, minor party objections ultimately count for little so lofty concern about the direction of Europe also coincides with self-interest. Christian Democrat deputies are split over whether to back the caretaker government - a ‘blue’ wing of more pragmatic and economically liberal KDU leaders led by outgoing Finance Minister Kalousek are backing it, although these people seem destined one way or another to join ODS. Green leader Martin Bursík, another loyal ally of ODS, also seems to be actively supporting the project, mainly in order Klaus-proof the caretaker government as much as possible the choice ministers.
For, it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good. As last man standing, Klaus will play a more prominent role in foreign policy. As well as chairing the forthcoming EU-Russia summit (as agreed earlier - VK is something of Putin fan so no feathers likely to be ruffled there), Klaus may chair the upcoming EU-China summit and the June EU summit, unless Jan Fischer has unexpected chutzpah and cojones The June summit will discuss Ireland’s ratifying the Lisbon Treaty and the EU position for December’s Copenhagen climate conference. As a rampant climate change sceptic/denier and fierce opponent of Lisbon, Klaus will no doubt have some views about how to handle both agendas.
The Czech Senate is, however, likely to vote on the Lisbon Treaty in early May and the Treaty is likely to be narrowly ratified: they need a mere seven (of 36) ODS Senators to join the other pro-Lisbon parties (everyone apart from the Communists) and it will finally be ratified. We know that 4-5 Civic Democrat Senators will definitely vote for the Treaty, so that means that only another 2-3 need to back it (or indeed merely not turn up, lowering the vote for the required majority) and it will go through. Indeed, who know, perhaps some juicy side offer to the Communists from the Social Democrats - who are very keen to show that business in Prague is continuing as usual - may induce a couple of them to leave the building for a while.
The new government won’t have a lot to do. Just (just?) to prepare a budget for next year, revise the existing one in the light of the downturn and implement some anti-crisis measures to keep the Czech economy afloat. Here, interestingly, the caretaker government may provide useful political cover for compromise by the big parties on anti-crisis measures to fight the economic crisis. The National Economic Council set up in January was supposed to play such a consensus building role, but the Social Democrats cold shouldered it, given a distinctly right-wing complexion. After the fall of Topolánek, however, some piecemeal economic measure were surprisingly quickly agreed by ODS and CSSD legislators. Still, their current fall out about the implementation of the previously agreed car scrappage scheme suggests that such compromise may not be that easy to reach, given their ideological differences.
For all the talk of contagion across the region, the Economist's new Political Instability Index offers (almost certainly quite right) contrasting assessment of the political prospects of Central and East European states in the global downturn. Small, ethnically homogeneous, successfully reforming states with strong social safety nets and good(-ish) economic fundamentals such as Slovenia and the CzechRepublic, are rated alongside Germany and Japan as among the most internationally stable political systems. Ukraine’s uncertain national identity, high levels of inequality and corruption and proximity to a restive and powerful Russia, by contrast, see it rated alongside African and South American states as the amongst the world’s highest risks for political instability. Expect a riot. Other Central and East Europe states get more mixed scores. Estonia’s success in democratic and market reform, for example, was offset by the higher risks associated with its ethnic diversity and weak welfare state. Poland's traditions of protest politics also see it rated as moderately risky, despite otherwise good indicators.
The methodology is a fairly standard political science approach of producing baskets of variables covering different risk factos, some structural and longer term, others more short-term and conjunctural. It's not sure whether all these have been crunched in some regression analysis or totted up some other way (the former, I suspect), but their high risk rating of Moldova seems to have been quickly borne out with the violence surrounding Moldova's elections, won by the incumbent Moldovan Communists. The opposition cry foul and claim a stolen election - the first move for any Coloured Revolution scenario - and students vent their frustration on some government office equipment (PCs thrown through a window). I don't know enough about Moldovan politics to make any judgements, but I suspect that if the PCM did steal the elections they probably didn't need to.
The Economist lays into Bulgaria's Socialist Prime Minister for extraordinary plan to create forms of parallel political administration with the European Commission in which Commissioners would intervene directly (as opposed to indirectly) in the country's government. A sort of Kosova-lite, in which the EU would quietly colonize Bulgaria - although seeing an election wheeze intending to shore up vastly unpopular domestic institutions and a vastly unpopular government, The Economist struck a eurosceptic note, by comparing it to Soviet oversight of the Bulgaria in the 1940s. And Bulgaria's long serving communist strongman Todor Zhivkov did n more than one occasion reportedly offered to make Bulgaria the 16th Republic of the USSR. On the other hand, in 1930s and 40s didn't Hayek and von Mises see collapsing weak, economically irrational national states with democracies all too inclined to sink into nationalist and populstic demagogy into a supranational federation run by well trained technocrats from Vienna as the best defence of liberal Europe?
