LN: TOP 09 too fragile for right-wing leader

Prague, March 13 (CTK) - TOP 09 may be replacing the Civic Democrats (ODS) as the strongest Czech right-wing party after the presidential election, but its mastermind Miroslav Kalousek would be far less acceptable for voters without the ageing Karel Schwarzenberg, Daniel Kaiser says in daily Lidove noviny yesterday.

He recalls that the latest ppm opinion poll indicated that TOP 09 would win 16.5 percent and the ODS only 13.3 percent of the vote if elections were held now.

If this trend continues for a few months, voters will start considering TOP 09 the right-wing leader, Kaiser writes.

He says TOP 09 would consequently win support from all non-socialist voters who are going to cast their votes instinctively against the left-wing that controls many municipalities, most regions, the Senate, the Presidential Office and only needs to win a majority in the Chamber of Deputies to gain absolute control.

The general election is due in mid-2014.

The Civic Democrats are connected with dubious entrepreneurs and grey eminences with a criminal past so much that common people have been making fun of it for some time, Kaiser writes.

He says Prime Minister Petr Necas, ODS chairman, has not been tinted with any scandal, but that he was forced to make pragmatic pacts to maintain his position in the party.

He adds that Necas is a respectable man but no leader of the crowds and merely a temporary solution for the ODS.

Unfortunately, among Necas's party colleagues there is nobody whose personality could change the ODS's situation of being favoured by neither voters nor media, Kaiser writes.

He says the ODS was lucky to have a charismatic leader only in the beginning when Vaclav Klaus headed it. Mirek Topolanek who replaced Klaus as ODS chairman appeared a promising figure at first, but big politics destroyed him, he adds.

The direct presidential election held in January weakened the ODS in two ways because the former socialist prime minister Milos Zeman replaced Klaus and because it made Zeman's rival in the election and TOP 09 chairman Karel Schwarzenberg more popular, Kaiser indicates.

ODS presidential candidate Premysl Sobotka totally failed in the election.

Kaiser says Schwarzenberg is a clear example of an artificially boosted political career.

Schwarzenberg has never had a coherent set of opinions, he has never written or made up anything crucial. He allied with people and later cut ties to them when they stopped being useful, Kaiser writes.

Though Schwarzenberg is deputy prime minister and foreign minister, he can pretend he has nothing in common with the government and the scandals of his party colleagues and that he even does not know what these scandals are about, presenting this as a charming quality of his personality, Kaiser says.

But in a world where impressions are more than reality, the patriarchal Schwarzenberg with his indisputable aristocratic charm means a lot for his party, Kaiser writes.

Seventy-five-year-old Schwarzenberg is an heir to an old aristocratic family.

Schwarzenberg originally planned to end as TOP 09 chairman but then he announced that he would lead the party to the next general election. This is not surprising since the strategist Kalousek probably concluded that the general decline of the Czech right wing is a good opportunity for TOP 09 to take the lead with relatively small effort, which Schwarzenberg is certainly capable of, Kaiser points out.

It would definitely not take Kalousek long to persuade Schwarzenberg for a mission of ousting the Civic Democrats because Schwarzenberg considers the ODS an anomaly on the political scene of the European continent, Kaiser writes.

Those who do not consider scepticism about European integration or about the environmental craze of the West important may feel indifferent to the shift on the Czech right wing, he says in connection with the Eurosceptical ODS, pro-European TOP 09 and Klaus, the biggest Czech opponent of "environmentalism" and EU integration.

But the leading position of TOP 09 on the right wing is risky: without Schwarzenberg who cannot remain in top politics for long, the controversial Finance Minister and TOP 09 first deputy chairman Kalousek will be far more vulnerable and far less acceptable for voters, Kaiser indicates.

But TOP 09 is nothing without Kalousek. It is a party in which even Helena Langsadlova who knows nothing about politics can become deputy chairwoman, he says.

Outside Prague, TOP 09 has no firm roots and its alliance with the Mayors and Independents (STAN) movement has no good prospects as even Kalousek acknowledged that his political views differ from those of many of the mayors from STAN, Kaiser writes.

Schwarzenberg seems like a flyer advertising a new enterprise that tries to attract customers with low prices that it will not be able to offer for a long time, he concludes.