Prague, Jan 30 (CTK) – It would be meaningless to assess the performance of the Czech cabinet of Bohuslav Sobotka based on how many tasks and pledges it has fulfilled or failed to fulfil, since its main contribution is its calm and positive style of ruling, Jiri Pehe writes in daily Pravo on Saturday.
Halfway through any government’s term, most political analysts assess its performance based on its success in fulfilling its policy statement. This is certainly an important criterion, but on the Czech scene, the the government’s “artistic presentation” seems to be even more important, Pehe writes.
For many years before, the Czech Republic had governments that may have fulfilled their respective policy statements better than the present one, but they did so in the atmosphere of incessant disputes not only with the opposition, and of deputies suspiciously switching from one party to anther, but also of scandals in the government coalition, Pehe writes.
People got rightfully fed up with all this, he says.
Furthermore, the previous cabinets pushed through a number of important, often evidently asocial reforms using various tricks and often by the closest possible majority of one vote, though it was clear that these reforms were unviable without a broader political consensus, Pehe writes.
As an example he gives the pension system reform, or the introduction of the system’s second pillar, which the previous rightist cabinet of Petr Necas pushed through a few years ago despite protests from the then senior opposition Social Democrats (CSSD) and which Sobotka’s (CSSD) centre-left cabinet scrapped recently.
The main contribution of the Sobotka cabinet, also including the ANO movement and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), is its style of ruling, Pehe continues.
First, the three Czech coalition parties do not start unnecessary battles against each other, in spite of their differing ideological positions and ways of operation, Pehe writes.
Occasional intra-coalition disputes have always faded out quickly, mainly thanks to Sobotka, who is capable of reacting to Andrej Babis, the ANO leader and finance minister “who is sometimes hard to cope with,” adequately without escalating conflict situations unnecessarily, Pehe writes.
Second, the government has managed to create positive expectations, in terms of economy above all, he continues.
This is in a sharp contrast mainly with the government of Necas (2010-2013), whose catastrophic warnings that the Czech Republic would inevitably embark on the “Greek path” without the government-promoted reforms created the atmosphere of mistrust in Czech society, Pehe writes.
Sobotka’s cabinet, for its part, does not unnecessarily create an atmosphere of fear, not even in relation to the migrant crisis that is urgent in Europe, Pehe says.
The government’s official steps have been prudent. It has left the opposition and President Milos Zeman to herald catastrophic warnings themselves, though individual representatives of the coalition, mainly Babis, also cannot help making a populist appeal now and then, Pehe writes.
However, a permanent stain on Sobotka’s government is that it exists only because the two traditional parties, the CSSD and the KDU-CSL, have turned a blind eye to the monstrous clash of interests caused by the presence of Babis, a billionaire owner of the Agrofert chemical and food processing giant, in it, and the fact that Babis’s ANO is no really democratic political entity but an incoherent crowd around the unpredictable oligarch, Pehe writes.
The toleration of this harms democracy from the long-term point of view, he says.
Some may object that the governance of the country by Sobotka’s team is a nuisance. However, the necessary adequate portion of political entertainment and conflicts for the media and the public to feed on has been generated by President Zeman, Pehe writes.
In a situation where the government faces no strong parliamentary opposition, it could be said with certain irony that Zeman unintentionally helps the government, since political circus show belongs to democracy, Pehe concludes.
