Prague, Nov 18 (CTK) – President Milos Zeman managed to connect Czech extremist groups and put himself in their head, David Klimes writes in daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) about Zeman’s address at a meeting of the Bloc Against Islam and the Party of Citizens’ Rights (SPO) attended by Eurosceptics and Communists (KSCM) on Tuesday.
On the national holiday of November 17, 2015, the president of the modern Czech Republic has addressed such an extremist crowd for the first time, Klimes writes.
The previous heads of state, Vaclav Klaus and Vaclav Havel, have never tried to appeal to the frustrated mob in such a way, which is exactly what Zeman did. Both Havel and Klaus had their small favourite groups that some might consider extremist, yet Havel´s Greens and Klaus´s Eurosceptics were very different from the people who gathered in Prague´s Albertov neighbourhood yesterday, Klimes writes.
The Presidential Office´s claim that Zeman did not join the demonstration of the Bloc Against Islam movement of Martin Konvicka but just had a speech in the same place and at the same time seems absurd. The crowd was addressed by Konvicka, SPO head Jan Veleba and Zeman and all speeches occurred within one event, Klimes.
Konvicka, with his aggressive threats and Islamophobic statements, is by no means a personality that should host the president on a national holiday. However, the difference between the rhetorics of Konvicka and Zeman is actually rather small, Klimes writes.
The crowd that gathered to listen to Zeman and that radiated anger and annoyance included Konvicka´s followers with the symbols of a crossed-out mosque, people with Eurosceptical banners as well as supporters of the Communists and the SPO, the original name of which was the Party of Citizens’ Rights of Milos Zeman, and people carrying slogans supporting immigration from Ukraine but not Syria. In short, it was a gathering of people dissatisfied with the state of the country, Klimes writes.
He says these people would not meet at a single event otherwise, but Zeman succeeded in making a single group of them.
Zeman was clever enough not to talk about the anniversary of the fall of the Czech communist regime, as the members of the crowd would have different opinions on it. Instead, he talked about false elites and the straitjacket of uniform views and he claimed that none of his listeners was an extremist, which was strongly applauded, Klimes writes.
When Zeman declared that the president´s voice should be the voice of the whole nation, he in fact excluded all his opponents and put himself in charge of the frustrated mob. It is absurd that he did this on November 17, the happiest national holiday related to courage and heroism from which the Czechs may derive their common identity, Klimes writes.
In one of the disputes between “Zeman´s frustrated nation” and its opponents at Albertov, a bald-headed man with a machine gun tattoo at the top of his head had a quarrel with a student. When the bald-headed man seemed to have no argument to support his opinions, he told the student “Didn´t your mum at least teach you to respect the president?” Klimes writes.
Before the joint meeting of Zeman and Konvicka, the bald-headed man very probably did not appreciate any politician representing the Czech state, Klimes adds.
Even if the groups that gathered at Albertov on Tuesday had very different views of immigration, Islam, the European Union, the political system and parties, they have one thing in common to which they can vow loyalty now: their really national president Zeman, Klimes concludes.
