Prague, Dec 16 (CTK) – Modern democracies, including the Czech one, cannot survive without the existence of a strong public space and consistent protection of public interests just as they cannot survive without the freedoms of the individual, Jiri Pehe writes in daily Pravo Wednesday.
He writes that the ongoing Czech debate on banning smoking in restaurants, authorities´ right to fine people burning harmful fuels at home or the electronic registration of sales is a sign of a new attitude to the public space and public interests taking shape.
Anything that could be seen as public or state was suspicious after the fall of the dictatorial communist regime in 1989, Pehe writes.
This, combined with the arrival of neo-liberalism that was winning in the West then, sent the state, public interests and the public space into a heavy defensive for a long time, Pehe writes.
The absence of a strong civic society allowed the public space to be easily colonised by private interests. Even politics was privatised in the course of many years by “godfather-like” structures and lobbyist groups that found it easy to push through private interests to the detriment of the public ones, Pehe writes.
He writes that the Czech right still defends a sort of “right to dark” in business which makes it impossible to apply a law defending quality in the public space.
This can be seen in the fierce effort of the right to prevent the passing of a bill on the electronic sales registration, arguing that it would bother businesspeople and limit individuals´ freedom, Pehe writes.
He writes that the arguments against a ban on smoking in restaurants or against checks in the houses whose owners burn harmful fuels are of a similar character.
In a world seen this way, the right of the individual is prior to the rights of the whole even if the individual obviously harms the majority, Pehe writes.
He writes that this “privatised” concept of freedom has not made it possible to pass a ban on smoking in restaurants that is applied in a majority of Western countries.
Pehe writes that the opponents of the ban in the Czech Repblic argue that a restaurant is a private firm and that the non-smoking majority has the right not to go to the “smoking” restaurants.
Compromises between the interests of the whole and the freedoms of the individual must always be sought and they must be based on common sense, not an ideology, Pehe writes.
He writes that it is good that Czech lawmakers are starting to see public interests as a priority after a quarter-century of the often unregulated tyranny of the private ones.
