Prague, Nov 23 (CTK) – Adam Bartos, leader of the extra-parliamentary extremist National Democracy party, plans a memorial to the late president Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) though he ranks among Havel´s strong opponents, daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes yesterday.
The paper says Bartos has become ill-famed as an anti-Semite and xenophobe who has made the lists of Jews, homosexuals as well as followers of Havel´s “truth and love ideas” in the Czech Republic.
In June, Bartos established the Vaclav Havel Memorial” club with the aim “to reflect his contribution to the nations of the world.”
Havel, playwright, thinker and dissident, who was the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech president (1989-2003), died at the age of 75 on December 18, 2011. He was buried five days later.
“By Havel´s [death] anniversary, we will put up an architectonic competition. Prague needs a monument that will present Vaclav Havel in a really comprehensive and truthful way,” Bartos, the club´s chairman and only member, told LN, presumably with irony..
His latest initiative is to make Havel´s supporters angry.
LN writes that so far mainly people and groups that are directly connected with Havel and his spiritual legacy have initiated the construction of his memorial. Unlike them, Bartos has always been critical of Havel.
Bartos has been opposed to all expressions of liberal thinking, NGOs and the promotion of human and minorities rights. He thereby stands rather close to Havel´s antipode and successor in the presidential post, Vaclav Klaus (2003-2013).
In addition, Bartos is a keen supporter of “conspiracy theories” according to which Havel and his aides were and are linked to powers striving for control of the world, LN says.
“I consider the attempts at global governance another dangerous trend of the current world, similar to the Islamisation of the West, multiculturalism and political correctness,” LN cites Bartos as saying on his website.
Michael Zantovsky, executive director of the Vaclav Havel Library, his former aide and author of his biography, has expressed surprise at Bartos´s initiative to build Havel´s monument and he called it “bizarre.” He also points out that Bartos would have to gain consent of the Vision 97 foundation that Havel established with his wife Dagmar and that now possesses the rights to use his name.
LN also writes that Bartos, similar to Klaus, is fond of Moscow and he calls Russia the last bastion of traditional values that “the debauched European Union has abandoned.”
His relations with current Russian ambassador to Prague Sergei Kiselev are so good that it provokes speculations about a secret funding of Bartos´s party from President Vladimir Putin´s funds. This would explain the “mystery” of how Bartos, a freelance writer whose books are practically unknown, can afford to finance a political party, LN adds.
The leaders of National Democracy, which won 0.5 percent of the vote in the previous general election in 2013, were also invited to a reception at the Russian embassy held on the occasion of the Victory anniversary last year. Prior to the event, Bartos and party deputy head Ladislav Zemanek passed on a letter to Kiselev in which they expressed full support for Russia´s intervention in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, which the West condemned, LN writes.
Bartos has expressed his affection for Moscow on many other occasions. He also actively stood up against the “Dragon Ride,” that is the transfer of a U.S. military convoy across the Czech Republic to an exercise elsewhere in Europe, LN adds.
Most recently, Bartos has drawn attention as an organiser of xenophobic and anti-Muslim demonstrations attended by ultra-right followers, calling for the execution of all politicians who support the admission of Islamic refugees, LN writes.
