Prague, June 20 (CTK) – The Czech Republic, like other states, faces the decline of democracy and the rise of predators, or intuitive persons whose main quality is their will for power, Ondrej Fer writes in weekly Tyden yesterday, adding that on the Czech scene such figures are President Milos Zeman and Deputy PM Andrej Babis.
From the point of view of the development of democracy, it is actually unimportant whether Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) will manage to parry Babis’s (ANO) recent attack on him and the CSSD in connection with a controversial police reform, Fer writes.
Sobotka is a politician who works systematically and rationally. Sooner or later, he and all politicians of his sort will end up among the losers, overwhelmed by the rising predators, Fer writes.
He points out the emergence of leaders such as Viktor Orban in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia, Jaroslaw Kaczynski as grey eminence in Poland, and the support enjoyed in the USA by Donald Trump, the Republican contender for the post of president.
The Czech Republic has Zeman and Babis, Fer writes.
The above leaders resemble each other and all of them resemble Roman Emperor Septimius Severus (193-211), Fer writes.
Their common denominator is their will for power, which makes privileged politicians of them in the conditions of the ailing and declining political system. They succeed in growing up through their countries’ democratic procedures, which they do not scrap but strip them of their role. From this point of view, the situation of the present Czech Republic, and actually whole Europe, is the same as that of the Roman Empire where Septimius dubbed “Severe” was scrambling for power, Fer writes.
The vulturine directness of political predators is attractive in a way. Compared with the fatigued and sometimes boring democrats, the strong men seem to be a personification of energy, agility and capability of action. Many people feel irresistibly attracted by them, Fer writes.
Babis, Zeman, Putin and Trump, let’s call them predators, have been exposed to permanent and thorough criticism, but still their respective electorates have been growing. It seems that the more their authoritarian tendencies surface, the more intensively voters support them, Fer writes.
Babis and Trump are extremely successful businessmen. With a slight hyperbole, their methods can be described as those beyond good and evil. The only criterion of their efforts is the success level achieved. They have something that can be called intuition or the sixth sense, which also helps them in politics, Fer writes.
Politicians like Sobotka or the right-wing opposition Civic Democrat (ODS) leader Petr Fiala, along with their respective teams of analysts, are still pondering on what to do and how to do it, while the political predators are pursuing their goals already, Fer says.
Their capability that has proved itself in business, works in politics as well. Their well developed instinct means “more” than long analyses. The example of Babis and Zeman shows that a strong intuition for the development of voters’ moods is a priceless talent of a politician, Fer writes.
The popularity of strong men in Czech politics proves that the Czech scene lacks clashes between distinguished personalities. After the former competition between Vaclav Klaus and Vaclav Havel, Klaus and Zeman, and Zeman and Mirek Topolanek, there is a vacuum in the political discourse now, Fer writes.
After a pause where no one sought to fill the vacuum, Babis broke in and has become a clear hegemon of the domestic political scene, with Zeman being the only person who is capable of competing with him, Fer writes.
The Czech scene offers no other big player who is capable of changing politics into an impressive spectacle. That is why a predictable story can be expected to occur in the months to come, Fer continues.
First, the Alfa males will jointly remove anyone who would put obstacles to them. The two have not clashed with each other so far, but their clash will come one day and it will be fierce and stormy. It will definitely be a great spectacle reminiscent of the ancient Roman motto Bread and Circuses, Fer writes.
The spectacle will be so great that the Czechs will cease to miss the political parties that also strive for other aims than power and rise in power. Opinion polls indicate that such parties are rather unwanted by voters already now, Fer concludes, alluding to Babis’s ANO movement as a long-standing front-runner in party popularity polls.
