Petr Fiala, the head of the ODS, recently spoke of the Pirates as “children of our constituents”. It was an exaggeration, but not so great. In short, there is a fairly thorough description of the problem that this country – along with the ODS, Pirates and all others involved – may face in a year.
After the election weekend, it is no longer so bold to say that a year after the parliamentary elections, Andrej Babiš may end up in opposition. And that this will only happen if the leaders, members and especially the voters of the ODS and the Pirates are willing to accept the fact that the two perhaps most distant sides of Czech politics will rule together.
Now quickly all the possible “buts” that stand on the road to a blue-black alliance. Elections to the House await us in a year, which is a time that will run away in everyday life without you noticing, but in politics it is almost infinite.
35 percent of the population will not come to the most important Czech elections as to the regional elections, but around 60. Andrej Babiš will throw all his weapons into the campaign, especially your own money.
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It will depend on every percentage of the vote: will the Communists and the Social Democrats pass into the House, who, meanwhile, go hand in hand into oblivion? Will it not happen to surprise Tricolor Klaus Jr., who failed in the regional elections, but not so fatally? What will the new announced movement of the hero of 2019, Mikuláš Minář, bring?
And can the opposition really agree on two pre-election blocs (Pirates and STAN for those who cannot vote for the ODS, TOP 09 and KDU-ČSL in the second alliance, whose voters cannot stand for Pirates.)? Good luck, because it will require a huge dose of goodwill and discipline like a belt.
But let’s admit for a moment that the opposition can do it and will be able to pass a majority against Andrei Babis and his allies in the new House. In other words, imagine that the Czechia approaches the possibility of having a new government without the participation of the YES movement. And we are at a critical point. We can have that government – if everyone involved wants it.
Which actually sounds banal, just look at the numbers. But in reality, it will be the most difficult compromise that this country has experienced in the last 30 years. And if anyone wanted to oppose the memory of Václav Klaus’s opposition agreement with Miloš Zeman, there is one significant difference – at that time it was to blow up Havel, get rid of smaller parties once and for all, and divide shares in the privatization of the rest of the country. No other part of Czech politics can have such ambitions. It was enough to look at social networks over the weekend, so that one would cease to be under the illusion that the only goal is enough for the opposition, namely to rid the country of Babiš. The ditches are still deep.
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For a not insignificant part of ODS and Pirate voters, a possible future government partner is one of the worst they have seen in politics. Pirates are “modern ties” for part of the ODS hard core, while ODS are “nineties” for traditional first-generation Pirates.
Which is quite a complicated situation. Until recently, Ivan Bartoš personally and the people around him spoke about the 1990s, in which they grew up as children and later teenagers, with the same resistance as about the 1980s. In fact, almost like Andrej Babiš, who always passed through both decades as the winner.
The ODS was created as the engine of change in the 1990s. We could now have an endless debate on what did not work out at the time, but it doesn’t make much sense – but the author of this text would like to publicly agree that much more has been done at the time. However, we will not change the past, now we are changing the future, as the slogan of one telephone operator’s campaign in the 1990s was.
Pirates, of course, do not share the emotion that many people over the age of 45 seize when they remember the backward but cheerful, free, and rapidly changing country of the early 1990s. And the Pirates are no longer going to listen to stories about how we built democracy and capitalism at the time. OK. No one can ask them to, because they take things that some of us are still amazed about. The real revolution for them was not the election of Václav Havel as president, but the moment when the mentioned operator began to offer unlimited internet for an affordable monthly fee.
Finding understanding between two large social groups is not entirely easy, the more difficult it is between parents and children. However, if both parties do not try to do so, Andrej Babiš can open a port, which he is said to drink during meetings with President Zeman.
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This temporary reconciliation is perhaps even more difficult than the practical steps that a new government would require – and even these are not exactly trivial. For example, to agree on who will eventually aspire to the post of prime minister, and then to abide by the agreement as well. I can think of a very simple proposal: What about the leader of the bloc that wins more seats?
A common procedure for the election of the leadership of the Chamber of Deputies, whose chairman can, according to the Constitution, play a decisive role in the appointment of the prime minister, must also be clearly agreed. Let us reckon that President Zeman, who has his first two attempts at forming a government, will strive to keep Babiš at Straka’s Academy, even at the cost of endless obstruction. But the time is “only” until March 2023. And if the social atmosphere is clearly in favor of change, which of course does not have to happen, in the end it will not be so hot.
And then there’s another such trifle. Government program. There is one rule in politics: if you really want to agree, you can agree on anything with anyone. And conversely. And you adjust your negotiating tactics accordingly. It’s certainly quite complicated, so it’s probably better to start talking about it before the day after the election. But it will still be more meaningful than if the government’s strategy is created every Sunday according to what the prime minister announces in a video from his garden on YouTube.
Of course, getting rid of the hegemon of previous years only thanks to a broad coalition of parties is not without risk. Slovakia successfully did this with Mečiar in 1998 and it lasted eight years. Then Fico appeared. And when Iveta Radičová tried again in 2010, the disparate coalition lasted a year and a half. And Fico returned in full force in the spring of 2012, and only this spring did the Slovaks send him into oblivion. At the cost of the murder of a young journalist and his partner, plus the slightly eccentric Igor Matovic in the role of prime minister.
The Czechia may have a certain advantage in this. You can choose from a dignified conservative man in his fifties – a former rector of a prestigious university – and a man in his forties with a somewhat unusual haircut and solid political talent. Or Babiš. It’s that simple now, a year before the big decision.
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