Dr Sean's Diary

Flexible friends

2009-12-16T12:34:00.005Z

SSEES is visited by two members of the much re-constituted but officially legendary Plastic People of the Universe, the underground rock groups whose trial in 1976 spurred the formation of Charter 77: Vratislav Brabenec, one of the founding originals, and Eva Turnová who has been the Plastics' bass guitarist since 2001. As this is, in Czech dissident terms, the equivalent of a royal visit, the current Czech ambassador to the UK, translator, Havel confidante, one-time politician - he led the Civic Democratic Alliance in its terminal breakdown phase in 1997-8, but enough of that - Michal Žantovský introduces proceedings in Masaryk Common Room. He sensibly sticks to water, leaving the red wine to the visiting Plastíci, chipping in the occasional translation, but like the good diplomat he is otherwise listens and doesn't say much.

An array of armchairs and Peter Zusi's relaxed and informal moderation give the event something of the feeling of an intellectual chatshow and we get a variety of observations and recollections: how the group was named after a Frank Zappa song, but, Brabenec later discovered, in exile in Canada slightly suggested the flexibility of a talking credit credit in aTV ad;
how records were smuggled in and traded on black market burzy in the woods near Prague in 1970s and 80s; how musicians made amps from electrical hobby kits; how boring the 1976 trial was; how capitalism is indeed the same as communism; how Brabenec fell over into middle of a performance at the National Theatre, but was forgiven.

The final question, from the Masaryk Society's Michael Tate, who has brilliantly organized both this event and the Plastics' concert in London at the South Bank in January, asks whether the group has not become too disneyfied as kitsch cultural icon. But it's late in the evening and they need a cigarette, so all we get from Brabebc is a rather zen answer to the effect that the group's credo is "Don't be Stupid" - which would also make a good slogan for a university, I thought. Eva Turnová more straightfowardly explains that they are somewhat allergic to ageing hippies, who remember the group from 1970s and prefer to play for young people and international audiences. She can speak Chinese.

Brabenec was also interviewed this morning on the radion in the slightly unlikely venue of the BBC's Midweek programme - listenable here.

Update: Tom Stoppard who was in the audience at the event (note to self: he was probably the bloke with the white manbag) and has played a big role in enabling the Plastics' gig at the South Bank - has written a profile of the band and its music in the Times.

Going green with ODS in Copenhagen

2009-12-14T20:04:00.006Z

In a loosely Cameroonian spirit, the Czech Civic Democrats (ODS) are calling for global environmental responsibility over climate change at the Copenhagen conference: a tough call, as they are not entirely agreed that it is taken place and, if it is, what is causing it. The two most prominent ODSáci attending the conference are a case in point: ecological expert and one of the few plausible green figures in the party, Senator Bedřich Moldan, and the more climate change sceptical MEP Miroslav Ouzký.

The result? A confused press release, which carefully doesn't mention the cause of climate change, but instead stresses a grab bag of lesser (but shared) ODS concerns: money must not be wasted; the competitiveness of European industry must not be damaged; deforestation in the Third World is a/the key issue; technology not emissions limits will save us; big countries are dominating the conference and obstructing an agreement (wake up and smell the fair trade coffee, gentlemen). Somehow the party is more irritating in confused, evasive mode, than it is when in traditional Klausian flat earth mode.

Fractured alliance

2009-12-10T19:12:00.004Z

Tim Bale's brief on the Parliamentary Affairs website trails some of the arguments and analysis about the new European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament that Tim, Aleks Szczerbiak and I have been working on.

Eastern Europe's climate of opinion

2009-12-08T14:28:00.004Z

The Guardian teams up with liberal newspapers around the world to make a quintessentially middle-of-the-road appeal for moderate and sensible agreements between world leaders to rein in carbon emissions at Copenhagen. East European partner newspaper are, however, conspicuous by their absence: Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza, Russia's embattled Novaya Gazyeta and no less than two Slovenian newspapers (serious broadsheet Delo and the popular Večer), but no press voices from Hungary, the Baltic, Slovakia, Romania or (possibly no surprise here) the Czech Republic.

Perhaps The Guardian just wanted a representative sprinkling of global opinion. However, medium sized, Old EU countries are much better represented. As one of PhD student points in a journalistic blog thinkpiece, CEE states, intellectuals aside, tend not to do global responsibility or even want much of a hand on the tiller of global governance. Too used to being transition states stoking the fires of economic growth to realize that they are part of the global North. But as Czech philosopher Václav Bělohradský, anti-capitalist liberal, pithily observed, when viewed from Africa a butcher's shop in Munich or Prague looks pretty much the same.

Everything stops for tea

2009-11-28T17:16:00.007Z

It's Friday afternoon, getting dark and the SSEES building is slowly emptying of staff and students before the weekend. One person heading into the building, however, is UK's ambassador to the Czech Republic Sian Macleod. My SSEES colleague, Czech and Slovak literature specialist Peter Zusi, get to serve the tea and talk to the ambassador, who is a former professional violinist and also served in Moscow at the time the Soviet Union was slowly crashing down around our ears. She could perhaps have been forgiven for thinking that Prague would be a calmer posting, but that would be to reckon with the perfect Lisbon Treaty storm created (almost) around the country by Václav Klaus.

As reformed Klausologist, I hear myself - somewhat as if in an out of body experience - saying that criticisms of VK as villain of post-1989 politics are overdone and that both the popularity of the current technocratic caretaker government and familiar Havelian diagnosis of the Czech Republic as in a permanent malaise brought on by parties, professional politics, lack of civil society, failure of elites etc etc are riff that the Czech intelligentsia and, well, somewhat overdone. Rather like the Sovietologists of the 1970s, who defined themselves as anti-anti-communist, I find myself becoming anti-anti-Klaus.

Before I can discredit myself any further, however, the discussion happily turns to Czech culture - not with me obviously, several students from the SSEES Czech Seminar have shown up - so there are some useful recommendation of things to read and listen to, including Czech-Moravian folk updaters Čechomor - as well as the news that the veteran rockers, who inspired Charter 77, Plastic People of the Universe will be visiting SSEES on 15 December. Politically speaking, I also learn that Cameron ally Greg Hands is chair of the parliamentary Czech and Slovak group and can speak both languages. Another interesting element in the unusual mosaic of the European Conservative and Reformists group that colleagues at Sussex University and I are following with some academic interest.

A very relaxed and interesting conversation moves from how you say 'letters of accredition' in Czech (pověřovací listiny) and ends up on Russian poetry. The ambassador needs to go. As a Senior Lecturer, I, naturally, get to stack the dishwasher. There's no one around. The building is almost deserted. Time to go home.

A tale of two Slovakias

2009-11-19T20:09:00.014Z

SSEES marks the 20th anniversary of November 1989 with two contrasting Slovak speakers - a nice touch, as the fall of communism in the Czechoslovakia is so often reduced to events in Prague. The Magic Lantern, Václav Havel, speech from the balcony of the Melantrich building, vast crowds packing Wenceslas Square, more crowds crowds jangling their keys in unison at rallies on the Letna plain to ring out the change of regime. Dozens of local transitions get forgotten as does and a fully fledged Tender (or Gentle) Revolution (Nežná revolúcia) in Slovakia. Similar, but different to the Velvet Revolution played out in the neighbouring Czech lands
.

The first visitor to SSEES is Fedor Gál, Slovakia sociologist, researcher, opposition activist and (latterly) film-maker and media entrepreneur, who is presenting his new documentary Dobré ráno, Slovensko (Good Morning, Slovakia) which chronicles the last days of the regime, the revolution and first six months of 1990 as the Public Against Violence movement Gál chaired (see photo below) started to be bruisingly pushed aside and internally fracture under the growing pressure from Slovak nationalism, some of it animated by ill concealed anti-semitism. Gál left to live in Prague in 1992, but is still well known enough to drawn an audience of 60-70. Most, as I later discover, are young Slovak and Czech students, though almost none from SSEES curiously enough.

Things get off to a bad start when, after opening remarks, it becomes clear that the English language version of the film won't play. We can, however, show it in Slovak, which is OK for around 80% of the audience and perhaps a blessing in disguise as the English version is overdubbed, rather undermining its effect, rather than subtitled. The film, however, is powerful and well made and in the Q and A that follows Gál shows himself to be a magnetic and charismatic speaker. If you wondered why he was a revolutionary leader, this would answer your question. The questioners are all young, the question all in Czech or Slovak, self-translated in English. Everyone agrees that communism-nationalism-and-populist social-democracy are all part and parcel of the same illiberal conundrum that plays to the lowest, materialistic and most provincial inclinations of the Slovak and Czech populace and still haunts the region. Why did thy not handle things more smartly? Boli sme blbí, Gál tells his listeners in a line you feel he's probably used before. But given the revolutionary avalanche of events and the fact he bowed out of politics almost two decades ago, that's perhaps a more than acceptable answer.

Showing up in the grander circumstances on 17 November itself to give a lecture, Slovak Prime Minister, Robert Fico represents precisely that Other Slovakia (my phrase) that Gál and his listeners so dislike. We had expected a bland speech, but characteristically Fico decided to deal with controversial issues bluntly and head on: not everything under communism had been all bad -welfare standards were higher and teaching in universities 'more systematic'; there had been privations and bureaucracy - he himself had had to queue through the night to book his honeymoon to Malta; the revolution was not a cause for unbridled celebration as the 'tribunes of the revolution' didn't deliver on promises of fairness and freedom and hacked away a lot of ordinary people's social certainties in their pursuit of economic and party self-interest (until the arrival of R. Fico and Smer, you understand. Politically, this is some extent a necessary move as in 1989 Fico was a member of Communist Party of Slovakia (having joined in 1987) working at the Institute of State and Law of the Academy of Sciences, although on the other hand some Czech Social Democrats have similar backgrounds as bright young things in the late socialist nomenklatura and don't feel the need for such a 'balanced' assessment of the old regime.

The main achievement of the revolution in this rather interesting Fico-ean interpretation was that it opened up the way for an independent Slovakia and for further economic modernization, although an over dependence on car construction for export would entail an economic strategy based on high public spending in these days of global recession, partly to invest in education.

In the Q & A Fico switched to Slovak, ostensibly for the sake of not being misquoted or misunderstood by the Slovak media in not quite perfect English, but presumably also because he knew he was going to say something worthy of that night's TV news. There were three questions to which he gave long, unfazed confident answers, perhaps being Robert Fico he could guess what he was going to be asked: the quality of Slovak higher education (admittedly poor, too many universities, too much local pride at stake); what would he do if he were a Slovak Hungarian (cherish and protect his own culture and learn to speak perfect Hugarian); and did he think there was a trade-off between freedom and prosperity (no but golden plated freedom could be a bit costly - Slovak officials weren't well resourced enough to deal with too many freedom of information requests).

My sympathies were, it must be said, not with Fico, who made a more convincing case for himself on his last visit in UCL in 2006. On the other hand, he has turned out to have played the smarter political game and, as one leading specialist on Slovak politics, reminded me after afterwards it is a sign of progress to have 'bog standard left-wing politics' dominating the Slovak political scence not the more paranoid and dangerous nationalism of the Mečiar era - a period oddly absent from Fico's speech - albeit suffused with a bit of dodgy nomenklatura nostalgia for social cosseting of the normalization era.

The text of the speech doesn't seem to be on the net yet, but extracts from YouTube can be seen here. Gál's film (broken down into 14 short episodes) can be seen (in Slovak) here.

Update: A video of the full lecture has now appeared on the UCL-SSEES website here.

The Czech right: culture, folk roots and a bit of fusion

2009-11-10T19:44:00.006Z

Public engagement is flavour of the month just now, so when asked out of the ether to contribute something about Czech politics to the launch issue of cultural-political monthly intended to fill the gap left by the winding up of the long-established Czech intelligenstia Literární noviny I agreed. The venture is, rather unusually, being undertaken by a newly formed cultural and publishing co-operative (an institutional form rarely seen in the CR outside the housing sector)

Clearly, I should have asked for some CDs in payment as well as a small donation to charity because, as I later discovered, the moving spirit behind the project who contacted me, Jiří Plocek is a musician and sometime member of famed folk/jazz/bluegrass fusionists Teagrass. Still, readers who you want to improve their reading experience might want to click in to one of the group's performances with Hungarian singer Irén Lovász here

The topic they asked me to write on, framed in an interestingly Czech terms (since when did anyone in the UK care about the authenticty of anything? ) was:

"Is there an authentic political right in the Czech Republic?

When observers question the authenticity of the right in the Czech Republic, they generally have one three things in mind: 1) that the Czech right’s largely pro-market orientation makes it an alien import ill suited to Czechs’ Central European traditions; 2) that on a European level the Czech right is an isolated and odd phenomenon with few real partners beyond the British Tories; or 3) that right-wing parties and ideologies in the Czech Republic have, wittingly or unwittingly, been little more than a cover for corrupt and self-interested networks of politicians, businesspeople and officials. All three contain elements of truth but also strong elements of caricature.

The emergence of strong liberal-conservative right wing in the Czech Republic after was one of the early political surprises in post-communist Central Europe. Many observers assumed that Czechoslovak politics would be shaped the country’s ‘social democratic tradition’ or cultural and geographical proximity to the social market economies of Austria and Germany. A Czech centre-right, if it emerged at all, was expected to be Christian Democrat in outlook. The rise of Václav Klaus in 1990-1 backed by a coalition of Civic Forum anti-communist grassroots activists and the formation of ODS quickly put paid to such illusions – as did the early electoral marginalization of KDU-ČSL.

However, that the civic right that coalesced around Klaus did have social and intellectual roots extending back the normalization period and back to 1960s followed: the penetration of Western neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideas into Czechoslovakia during the brief window opened by the Prague Spring; the discrediting of the once strong Czech democratic-socialist tradition after the 1968 invasion; the frustration of a generation of well educated people stifled by the rigidity of the Husák regime; the isolation of dissent from the bulk of Czech society; the parallel formation of ‘grey zone’ of technocrats including Klaus and other liberal economists, who were left by the regime with little to do but read and bide their time. In hindsight, it is clear such phenomena set the scene for the emergence of a powerful civic right in early 1990s.

However, the Czech right arguably has some deeper historical roots. Despite an Anglo-Saxon Thatcherite veneer in many ways ODS was more national-liberal Contemporary Czech right-wing eurosceptic concerns with ‘national interests’ or the Czech place in an emerging federal Europe would have been immediately recognisable in Czech political debates 90 or 100 years ago. Viewed in this perspective, the unlikely phenomenon of ‘Czech Thatcherism’ is simply the latest assertion of a liberal Czech national identity in a region dominated by Austro-German traditions of corporatism and state paternalism.

Such independence can, however, breed isolation. While KDU-ČSL seamlessly integrated into broader West European family of Christian Democratic parties, Czech right-wing commentators have often agonized about whether ODS is in European terms truly a ‘standard’ authentic party. This issue has been starkly illustrated by formation in the European Parliament by ODS and the UK Tories of the new European Conservatives and Reformers group (ECR). While the Tories and ODS are well matched in their enthusiasm for free markets and dislike of the Lisbon Treaty, the remainder of the ECR is an uncomfortable mix of Latvian and Polish nationalists, Belgian populists and Dutch Christian fundamentalists. Such concerns about the inauthenticity of Czech right are, however, probably misplaced. Right-wing forces across Europe form an uneven patchwork of beliefs and traditions that defies easy categorisation. The Civic Democrats’ political pas de deux with the British Tories and lack of other major European allies suggest political weakness, not political abnormality.

A more lingering doubt is raised by the relationship between business and politics on the Czech right and the suspicion that right-wing parties’ ideological commitment to competition with the left is in reality skin deep and always set aside when money, power or political office are at stake. For many the sight of Miroslav Topolánek and other leading right-wing politicians sunning themselves on an Italian yacht in the company of a ČEZ lobbyist and a leading member of ČSSD graphically illustrated this. Those with longer memories may recall how cut throat electoral ODS- ČSSD competition in 1998 was succeeded by the Opposition Agreement, or how Václav Klaus successfully sought the support of Communist deputies in his bid to become President in 2003.

However, although shot through with an unedifying sleaze and graft – and an often brutal, pragmatism - in many respects Czech party politics is a highly conventional contest of left and right. As much political scientist have found Czech right-wing politicians and voters consistent and clear of ideological pro-market views and – quite often, at least – vote and act accordingly. The Czech right is also consistent in its social and electoral constituency: a distinct younger, better educated, better off urban electorate worked disproportionately in the private sector and tending to live in Bohemia rather than Moravia. Such a base has proved too narrow to deliver the right convincing parliamentary majorities, but is a common profile for conservative parties inclining towards market liberalism across Europe.

Over the past decade, political deadlock between left and right has repeatedly forced the Czech Republic’s major political parties of right and left, against their own inclinations, into ad hoc political co-operation. The current Fischer government is simply the latest instalment in this pattern. Pragmatic deal making or overarching left-right co-operation pacts such as the Opposition Agreement do not, however, make Czech parties of the right less authentically right-wing (or parties of the left less authentically left-wing). Indeed, co-operation across ideological and party divides has been a recognisable pattern in many European democracies, including interwar Czechoslovakia, and has often been a successful model for national development.

Taken together, this suggests that two decades after the fall of communism the Czech Republic does indeed possess a distinct and authentic right-wing rooted in the country’s culture, history and society. Authenticity is, however, in itself not a lodestone for good politics, effective government or political success. Indeed for critics of the Czech right such as Jiří Pehe the problem is precisely that it draws all too authentically on nationalistic and provincial reflexes of Czech society. Such judgements are probably too harsh, understating the liberal and modernizing impulses that have animated Czech right-wing politics.

One thing, however, does seem certain. When Czechs look their country’s right-wing they will, to some extent, see themselves reflected back. Whether that is a pleasant sight is, of course, a matter that they themselves must decide."

Update: The free launch issue of Kulturní noviny did indeed appear and can downloaded in PDF format here

Fairtrade with Josef Vissionovich

2009-11-07T21:42:00.009Z

Tesco's fairtrade coffee bears an image worrying reminiscent of a youngish Stalin. Somehow, I don't think Josef Vissonovitch would have approved of Fairrade - as we know, he was not one to approve of petty bourgeois commodity production. Still, no doubt this will encourage the friend of mine who always turns down the fairtrade option and asks for a cup of capitalist-explotation filter coffee, though perhaps some kind of rebranding might be in order. Freedom Blend? Capital Coffee?

Gambler Klaus knows when to fold 'em

2009-11-04T15:06:00.000Z

Inwardly, I never quite thought it would do it, but stony faced and behind closed doors he did. Václav Klaus signed the Lisbon Treaty and so the whole ratification shermoz is over - at least fo rnow and until they realise that the whole hybrid federal-confederal confection that this the EU political system needs some further reform and we do the whole thing again.

If VK can draw any crumbs of comfort, it is that his profile on the European stage is higher and his reputation amongst all but the hardest of hardline eurosceptics enhanced by his last-man-standing act of the last few months. He may even pick up a few Brownie points among the Czech public for squeezing concessions, albeit of a meaningless and symbolic kind, out of the EU. Who, after all , could disagree that the Beneš Decrees need defending for all time? Not many Czech politicians and not very publicly.

A second crumb that may cause the Czech President a wry smile is that his decisions dumps British Tory leader David Cameroon, whose touchy-feeling, bluey-greem modern conservatism he is known to abhore, acute political difficulties as he will be under acute pressure tfrom his party's eurosceptics o deliver on his 'cast iron' guarantee of a British referendum on Lisbon. Cameron's only personal opt-out clause from keeping his promise - that he wouldn't do it if the Treaty had already been ratified and was in force when he entered office may cut little ice there.

Why did Klaus acquiesce in the end? The answer it seems is that once the rest of the EU gave him whatever historical guarantees he could name concerning the Beneš Decress gidt wrapped and on a plate, he had a weak hand made up of increasingly fancifully challenges to the Treaty in Czech Constitutional Court. When it contemptuously rejected the last as irrelevant question mongering, he had no more cards to play and like The Gambler in the Kenny Rogers song, he knows when to fold 'em. The Czech President's democratic mandate was simply to weak to make bloodyminded defiance in the name of the Czech nation a real option and there was always the risk the main parties might just find the wherewithall to defenestate him through some constitutional amendment.

Sweet 'n' sour legacy of the Czech EU Presidency

2009-10-23T22:11:00.006+01:00

A sad little footnote to the Czech Presidency of the EU. Právo reports that three tonnes of sugar lumps complete with individual wrappings with Czech Presidency logo and slogan - We'll Sweeten Europe (if only, but a Czech did invent the sugar lump in 1843), y'know - are now left over at government ministries in Prague. Czech civil servants may have to put up with all manner of cutbacks, but at least they can rot their teeth having their coffee and tea as sickly sweet as they like...

BNP on Question Time: Kilroy wasn't here

2009-10-23T09:47:00.012+01:00

I sat in the front of the TV with one eye on a sheaf of article from the Czech press and one eye on BBC TV's widely billed, controversial edition of Question Time, it flagship panel discussion programme featuring British National Party leader Nick Griffin: the first time the far-right has been accorded the accolade of such recognition, although the BNP has had relatively easy access to the airwaves with its representatives regularly being interviewed on the radio. And, of course, British far-right parties have regularly been exposed and infiltrated by TV documentary makers since 1970s.

To make up for the howls of protest, the programme makers decided to make Nick Griffin's appearence on their programme the central issue, so the format largely shifted from multiple current affairs questions and familiar party ding-dong to a series of critical uestions about the BNP and its leader: specifically were its views whacky, extreme and racist and its leader someone who cannot explain away his earlier public record as neo-fascist and Holocaust denier.

The answer, of course, is that they were and he couldn't. All in all, it was reassuringly unimpressive performance by the BNP leaders, lacking not only any credible answers but also professionalism, poise or personal charm. I remember once watching Jean Marie Le Pen comprehensively outmanoeuvre a left-wing opponent on TV discussion with a mixture of sure footing cunning and avuncular bluster on French TV in the 1980s. Happily, the BNP leader clearly wasn't in this league.

I was just about to turn back to Prague municipal politics, however, when suddenly I caught flash of the kind of leader the British radical populist far-right probably does need and the kind of politician we probably should fear: it was Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrats' spokesperson for home affairs - up to that point a grey and totally forgettable presence on the panel, - launching into an eloquent tirade about how Britain should have closed its borders to citizens of new (that is predominantly, East European) EU member states for as long as possible and wasn't it awful that the government that the government didn't do this and lots of them came over here... Open borders in an opern liberal Europe. What a disaster.

For a fleeting moment, I though Mr Huhne, an unsuccessful contender for his party's leadership in 2007, was making a pitch for the BNP leadership, which to judge from his poor performance Nick Griffin might soon be vacating. Then I realised, of course, that, having slipped out of anti-fascist mode, he was simply illustrating the well established truth that immigrant-bashing and playing up to the public xenophobia is OK provided you are a respectable person from a resepctable mainstream party. And, Mr Huhne, - public school, Oxford, the City, economist and financial journalist, long-serving MEP, policy expert - is certainly that.

And then it struck me that, here - not necessarily in the person of Mr Huhne - but some of some ambitious, well educated, well spoken, reasonably well known figure public figure gone maverick that the real threat of more articulate, credible and dangerous far-right lies. No of burden of neo-fascist pedigree or a penchant for anti-semitism tor seeing the positive side of Hitler that, fortunately for us, encumbers Nick Griffin (and later held back Le Pen and Joerg Haider). Political or media skills already honed. Stock of political respectability already laid in.

Such figures seem to be media personalities with a certain political-cum-academic commentators (Pym Fortyn, Robert Kilroy-Silk) or frustrated members of existing parties, who turn maverick or decide to air views on race, minorities or immigration they have previously kept to themselves. Interestingly, Liberal parties, typically often under electtoral pressure from bigger competitors of left and right, whose identity is often a rather unstable mix of anti-establishment, pro-market, pro-market and pro-little person/geographical periphery appeals, seem especially vulnerable to such occasionally odd mutations: Haider's Austrian Freedom Party was originally a liberal grouping, controversial anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders was once an MP for Holland's Liberals the VVD; Germany's FDP was hit by accusations of anti-semitism in 2002-3 because of statements of one its then rising stars, the late Jurgen Molleman; in the mid-1990s factions in the FDP associated with the nationalist Neue Rechte intellectual (unsuccessfully) sought a Haider-style transformation of the party.

I don't, of course, expect to see Mr Huhne leading the BNP or indeed some populist confection (although I'm sure he'd do an excellent job if he did), but as the comedian Alan Davies pointedly pnoted on the This Week programme that followed Question Time's BNP-fest, Griffin's party are not a hugely successful or professional outfit and don't deserve high profile controverst treatment and still less the back-handed compliment of being banned from Question Time.

The real threats lie elsewhere. We clearly had a lucky escape when ex-Labour MP and chat show host Robert Kilroy-Silk proved too maladroit and egomaniacal to take over the UK Independence Party in 2004. Celebrity populists and mavericks peeling away from already opportunistic mainstream seem a potentially far more potent force than the wafer thin veneer of respectability and normality of a welfare chauvinist niche party that can't escape its neo-fascist roots like the BNP.

Klaus relents on Lisbon - but how far?

2009-10-21T11:20:00.003+01:00

Today's Times reports that Václav Klaus has relented - or is about to relent - and will sign the Lisbon Treaty in the coming weeks if some Irish-style deal to assuage his concerns about possible legal challenges to the 1945-6 Beneš Decrees expelling and expropriating Czechoslovakia's three million strong ethnic German minority under the Charter of Fundamental Rights which forms part of the Treaty are specifically ruled out.

The report is on an interview with Klaus published in Lidové noviny two days earlier in which VK makes clear he doesn't want a new Treaty that would have to be re-ratified by all 27 member states; that he 'cannot and will not wait for the British elections' even though David Cameron wrote to him in July urging him to do so (or, actually, in Mr Klaus's careful phrasing the letter'more or less suggests something to this effect (více méně neco v tomto duchu naznačuje) '; as you might guess the letter did not say 'Hang in there, Václav' or something to that effect). Most importantly, the interview conceeds that the Treaty will come into force because 'the train has picked up such speed that it cannot now be stopped or turned back...' but it is not the end of history: 'the dispute over freedom and democracy in Europe will surely continue. It must continue, otherwise things will turn out very badly for us'. Lutta continua.

But check out carefully what he says, or rather doesn't say. He doesn't say he will sign the Treaty or even mention himself signing it. This might, of course, be simple facing saving. The iimage of Europe's arch eurosceptic and last man standing putting his name to the hated document may simple be too much to put into words, especially for those who make up Klaus's (now rather limited) domestic political base. It is perfectly conceivable, however, that the President himself is pragmatic and hardheaded enough to do having stood out against it as Last Man Standing and dragged out final ratification for a few more months. Klaus has in the past been prepared to do pragmatic deals with domestic political opponents including the Czech Republic's reviled Communist Party, so why not with the rest of Europe? In the interview, he certainly realistically - and for the first time - accepts that Treaty is likely to come into force. Perhaps he has made an assessment that the countries main parties will get their act together and sink their differences sufficiently to constitutionally strip him of some powers, if he holds out too long. His departure as leader of ODS in 2002 showed a similar sudden pragmatism when he realised the odds had clearly shifted against him.

The five question interview i(no probing interrogation, this; more of a brief audience) however, a classic piece of Klaus position shifting (he accepts the Treaty will probably come into force) combined with well crafted ambiguities that seem to say one thing, but - on closer reading - don't actually. Domestically, will he actually sign the Treaty or perhaps negotiate for some form of ratification without his signature? There is, as mentioned, a view (and a fewlegal precedents) for legislation and international agreements coming into force without a presidential signature? He is and will not be waiting for the British elections (consciously or a tactic) but what if things happen to end up dragging out that long anyway despite VK's newly reasonable and realistic views as confided to Lidové noviny ? The Czech Constitutional Court needs to rule (decision slated for 27 October and it can (although probably won't) surprise, the EU's politicians still have to negotiate a quick fix to Klaus's objections at their summit. Will they be quick enough? Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico has already suggested that it the Czechs get a Beneš Decrees opt-out, well, darn it, the Slovaks want one too. Cue Slovak-Hungarian difficulties.

Perhaps Klaus will end up with his opt-opt signed, sealed and quickly delivered on on a plate, but 'end up' is really the key word here: Klaus is taking things move-by-move playing his way through an end game in a match that he knows he will probably lose, waiting for a sudden slip-up by tied opponents or a sudden turn of events which will generate a position that no one anticipatied

The interview - and,what it seems to say - is also a brilliant tactical move in deflating the mounting Europe-wide and domestic pressure, winning a brathing space and putting opponents off guard.

Checkmate in how many moves?

Czech Republic and Lisbon: The wisdom of crowds?

2009-10-19T21:25:00.002+01:00

Anyone in any doubt about the mobilising power of the Lisbon Treaty as an issue in the Czech Republic should check out the size of the crowds in the recent demonstrations (for and against President Klaus) outside Prague Castle.

Universities: A Wordle in your ear...

2009-10-15T22:04:00.007+01:00

I read an article in the new giveaway Evening Standard on the train yesterday. It was by Steve Smith, Chair of Universities UK, writing about the future of higher education. At first just it seemed a meaningless jumble of jargon and buzzwords. Now, however but having fed it into Worldle.net, I find I understand it perfectly.

British voters: Václav Klaus needs you!

2009-10-09T18:11:00.015+01:00

As in all the best action thrillers, it comes down to this: one man holds the fate of Europe in his hands. Unfortunately - or for those of a certain ideological disposition, fortunately - that man is not Arnie Schwarzenegger or Claude van Damme, but Václav Klaus.

Actually, it's only the fate of the Lisbon Treaty that Mr Klaus may hold in his hands, but as the Czech President has increasingly struck a Masarykian pose over the past few years coming up grandiose personal visions of a Europe re-made (or rather unmade) as a loose alliance of nation statse states bound by common values and free markets, he might prefer the former billing.

But still, the Czech President's willingness (or unwillingness) to pick up a pen is (or soon will be) all that stands between final EU-wide ratification of the LisbonTreaty. Of course, as a dyed-in-the-wool opponent of Lisbon and the ill-fated Constitutional Treaty, Mr Klaus understandably does not want to pick up his.

But surely, sooner or later he has to? The Treaty was, after all, duly ratified in both houses of the Czech parliament several months ago, after all, and Klaus is merely an indirectly elected head of state of a small country with pretty every EU government (including his own) against him.

Despite the optimism of the Czech Republic's caretaker technocrat Prime Minister Jan Fischer and his Foreign Secretary, Stefan Fule, that the Czech ratification of the Treaty would come by the end of the year (and what else, could they say?), this is, however, far from clear.

Constitutionally and politically, Mr Klaus - whose favourite metaphor for politics was for a long time that of an unfolding game of chess - still has a strong defensive position and few good moves left to make

On ordinary domestic legislation, the Czech president does not have strong powers. He has a weak veto on parliamentary legislation, which can be overturned by a simple majority vote of the lower house. His executive powers are also limited. Appointing judges and central bankers and choosing a Prime Minister designate to form a government after election is about the size of it.

However, when we come to international treaties things are bit different. Article 631b of the Czech Constitution states that the President "negotiates and ratifies international treaties". But no one is quite sure if this means the President must sign treaties approved by parliament (directly or as with EU accession by delegating it powers to a referendum) or that he must to do for treaties to be ratified but may not if he chooses. Indeed, a lively debate on the subject has ensued in Czech legal blogs (see here, for example). Some have suggested that were the first interpretation to be followed, a refusal to sign would result in the Treaty passing into law anyway, but that would have to be tested out in the Constitutional Court with the certainty only of a long, complex and controversial case.

Point blank refusal is, however, neither legally nor politically necessary for Klaus to hold up the Treaty There seem, however, to be a consensus that the President can (and indeed should delay) signing a treaty if he thinks it needs further examination or it constitutionality needs testing out. How long can he reasonably do so? How long is piece of string?

Statesmanlike as every Mr Klaus has gone straight for this strategy of seeking minor (but, of course politically unfeasible) amendments to the Treaty in the fundamental interests of the Czech state: specifically he is concern that the Charter of Fundamenal Rights might allow could enable the European Court of Justice to revise the 1945 Beneš Decrees under which the post-war Czechoslovak government stripped its ethnic German citizens of property and citizenship. This demand is a clever move combining the President's widely recognised but informal constitutional role of guardianship of the state role with a totemic and sensivity issue connected with national identity and demand which, viewed superficially, asks for no more than the kind of opt-out that old member states like the UK feel amply entitled to as a matter of course.

The country's politicians and major parties could, in theory, cut through the Gordian Knot by curtailing the President's powers, or indeed remove Klaus directly through some special constitional law or more indirectly by re-making the nature of the Czech presidency altogether through a constitutional amendment (as the Greens seem to suggest). However, given the present non-partisian caretaker government, which rests on a not altogether solid political agreement between the two major Czech parties, divisions in ODS and the unpredictable but Lisbon-unfriendly position of the Communists this seems unlikely. It might also be problematic constitutionally given that the Constitutional Court has akready rapped politicians' knuckles for attempting similar jiggery-pokery with the Constitution to allow early elections. Article 65(2) of the Constitution also allows the indictment (and possible removal) of the President for high treason in the Constitutional Court following a Senate vote but, I suspect, even the most ardent europhile might balk at equating Klaus's opposition to the Lisbon Treaty with this.

But is there any kind of end game available to Klaus? Even if he could, if he wished, lay into the current caretaker government's lack of legitimacy (Who voted for Fischer or Fule?), even in the Czech context the indirectly elected Klaus lacks either the public backing or the political legitimacy to block the will of an elected parliament for ever and a day.

Help, however, is happily at hand in the form of the those old ideological confreres the British Tories, even if Klaus has been fairly contemptuous in the past of the touchy-feely, bluey-green conservatism of Dave Cameron and co. Trying to fudge the issue of Lisbon without facing down his party's eurosceptics or re-open a very internally divisive issue, Cameron promised a British referendum on Lisbon (which would almost certainly reject it) - as a extra to the Treaty's existing ratification by the British Parliament - if and only if the Treaty was still unratified elsewhere and so not in force.

So, all Mr Klaus has to do is string out his questioning of the Treaty another six months and fend off a disunited Czech political class and a government of technocrats until (as seems likely) the British Conservatives win a May 2010 election, hold the promised referendum and let the people speak. The will Brits democratically derail the Treaty, while Mr Klaus say innocently, but with some satisfaction as he did after the Dutch and French referendums rejecting the original Constitutional Treaty, that he knew it would all end in tears when the voters got in on the act, but all he was doing was acting presidential and thoughtfully examining the Treaty and watching out for Czech national interests like a responsible head of state

Dave must be delighted at the prospect.

Germany's many shades of grey

2009-09-22T11:56:00.003+01:00

A predictable article in Earth Times about the crucial nature of the 'grey vote' in Germany's forthcoming elections. Crucial in the sense there are lot of pensioner voters, but not in the sense of any distinct bloc of pensioner votes. But wait. At the end, we read that Germany now has three pernsioners' parties, who hauled in 1.4 per cent of the vote in June's Euro-elections (quite good in by historic standards). Seems I am behind the times.

View from a castle

2009-09-19T18:32:00.002+01:00

Two days later I find myself, still somewhat to my surprise at a conference on Society, History and Politics organized by Prague's Institute for Contemporary History at the chateau-cum-conference centre of the Academy of Sciences in Liblice.

The chateau is lovely, almost embarassingly so, and perhaps not something the Academy will want to draw attention to as it tries to fight off swingeing cuts in its budget driven partly by post credit crunch austerity and partly by the shifting balance of power in Czech higher education. The universities want to get their hands on more of the research spending, hinting very sotto voce that the Academy is an old-style centralized monopoly based on the Soviet model and needs shaking up.

I am something of fish out of water, although the difference in approach are fascinating: dense detailed investigation of localities and time periods without the usual 'model fitting' preoccupations of most political science conferences or the concern with big scale (national, European) institutions. The papers (well not mine obviously) are of almost uniformly high quality and perhaps because the Czech language medium forces me to concentrate more, I realise that I learned a lot.

The central focus is much more on 1989 than the Brno conference, but there a still new insights on offer . The mass spontaneity of popular mobilization during the Velvet Revolution was more a subjective experience of surprise and togetherness than a reality; the mass flyers and leaflets produced during the early weeks of the revolution in the Czech lands and Slovakia, when caredully and painstakingly analyzed reveal - outside the more radical and anti-communist capital cities - a desire for a kind of monitory popular democracy firmly rooted in social(ist) property relationships.

Interestingly, Czech contemporary historians' research interests also bleed into political science and sociology. There are papers on the not-in-fact-quite-so-successful success story of Roma integration in Český Krumlov and Czech political parties after 1989 and their historic identities, although frustratingly I miss the one the role of Social Democrat exiles who re-founded the Czech Social Demoratic party in 1989. Not only would the pre-history of debates about what social democracy means in post-communist CEE be very interesting to know, but clearly the Big Orange Machine currently Czech politics upside down by giving up on early elections might not exist if things had turned out differently in 1989/90.

It would be an interesting piece of academic alchemy if political science and historical methods could really be harnessed together, but it rarely seems to happen, either in the Czech context or generally. Jason Wittenburg's book on Hungary is the only major work of this kind that really comes to mind. All too ofte, political scientists dabble well intentionedly in historical research and historians in contemporary political processes without quite coming up with anything new.

I pack my bag and switch on the telly to catch the latest political news, but there's only a discussion of whether Elton John and David Furnish should be allowed to adopt a Ukrainian orphan. "Adoption by two high-quality homosexuals (dva kvalitní homosexuálové) is preferable to life in an Ukrainian institutions", a spokeswomen for Czech Children's fund enlightenedly tells viewers. Then we are on the sports news. Slavia Prague play well, but they are outclassed at every turn and eventually beaten by Genoa.

I walk outside with my suitcase to sit and read and soaking the sun and the atmosphere. Then I hitch a lift with the Goethe Institute's minibus to the rather less lovely surroundings of Holešovice station.

Czech Republic: Elections to be held as scheduled shock

2009-09-15T18:38:00.003+01:00

I'm sitting in my parents-in-laws sixth floor flat in Brno with a glass of my father-in-law's red wine at one elbow and Czech-English dictionary at the other. Having spent all summer finishing various conference papers at short notice, I've been a conference on 20 Years of Czech Democracy at Masaryk University in Brno. We have an interesting first panel discussion of pinpointing the reasons for stability and longevity of the Czech party system; learn how the Czech Social Democrats have terrific and well focused political marketing and how Czech voting is stably class-based and generating right-wing suburbs on the periphery of Prague and Brno, while those left in the city centres toy with various centrist and populist parties. I disagree with the keynote address which frames Czech democracy in terms of democratic consolidation, admittedly broadly conceived. I think we should starting thinking about democratic quality and how well democracy works, not bracketing the CR with Serbia

While all this is going on the Czech parliament is passing an amendment to the Constitution allow it dissolve itself - the Constitutional Court ("the last guarantee of democracy" as one of my fellow panelists - possibly ironically - put it) which is practically next door to the Faculty of Social Studies where we are conferencing had struck down the previous one-off constitutional law shorterning the parliamentary term, so they have to pass a sensible general amendent along the lines they should have published years ago. Early elections postponed from October to November. Or so we thought.

Today brings the news that the Social Democrats don't want early elections at all, despite what they spent the last nine months saying. So terrified are they of the possibility of another successful challenge in the Constitutional Court to the latest amendment that they helped pass that they would rather the current caretaker government of technocrats formed in May continued for another nine months when scheduled elections can take place. Oh, and the technocrats will also get to make swingeing cuts to balance the budger including 3% salary cuts for public sector employees. The fine Social Democrat marketing campaign to be promisng decent living standards for ordinaty people wound up. Parliament isn't to be dissolved. The inter-party pact between the main parties of left and right that brought the caretaker government into exisitence is null and void. Topolnek resigns as a deputy in protest, pointlessly and rather riskily I thought. The technocrats in the 'non-political' government - whose leverage is increasing by the minute - want a new one to give them a democratic mandate (of sorts) but will only agree go on if they are allowed to rein in the budget deficit and cut public spending.

'Politologové jsou zaskočeni' the TV news says. Damn right we are. We should have been discussing issues of consensus, competition and the problem of building stable majorities yesterday, not waxing lyrical about the institutionalization of parties, although I suppose their stability as individual organizations add to the instability (or perhaps I should call that finely balanced nature) of the Czech party system . The current turn of events poses some pretty sharp questions about the Czech model of democracy and readiness with which politicians can chop and change the rules of the game when they put their minds to it and, having created in political system in which parties rule the roost, flee from government in times of economic crisis and hand over to a team of technocrats for a year does have a whiff of South America or Serbia about it.

I am going to another conference on the 1989 next. Unwise in many ways, as I am not a historian, but perhaps safer in some as the dull certainties of Czech political crisi management seem to be collapsing around us. The next 20 hours of Czech democracy are a lot harder to understand than last last 20 years

Pooling resources

2009-08-22T20:52:00.001+01:00

The Czech Republic is, as ever, distinctly short of things for children to do in the summer. So the only real option when the weather's hot - and bar a few thunderstorms it has been continually sunny - is to head for the local open air swimming pool: health and safety and the big leisure department of big councils have pretty much eliminated the local lido as phenomenon in England. You can find them, of course, especially in nooks and crannies of London boroughs, but they are curiosities hidden away or forgotten about or turned into urban lakes where swimming is definitely not on the agenda.

Not so the Czech Republic. Despite tougher hygiene regulations pretty much every municipality has its koupaliště or plovarna and they are still a firm fixture of any Czech summer. Indeed, so much Civic Democrat leader Miroslav Topolánek, is kicking off his campaign to get acquainted with the voters of South Moravia - where he will head his party's list - with a tour of local koupáky just to convince all and sundry that he is a normal down-to-earth Czech bloke on his second marriage and not a corrupt, sleazy politician who hangs out with lobbyists for big electricity companies and spin doctors on expensive yachts in Italy awhen not walking around in the buff on Silvio Berlusconi's poolside. Perish the thought.

It's a clever strategy. Unlike Klaus - who can wow and work a crowd and charm opponents, but whose efforts to join the victorious Czech football team and be one of the lads was one of the more excruciating things I remember seeing on Czech TV - the Ordinary Bloke role is one Topolánek can do very well. Equally, cleverly there's no need to do much politics: no party programme (as yet) to defend and no big billboard campaign to annoy people and remind them they'll have to go and: just the occasional swim or game of volleyball in lidos and sports grounds across various factory towns interspered with a bit of well publicized cycling between locations (taking the limo for the hilly bits, you understand). And, of course, Topol's change of scene also leaves Karel Schwarzenberg - staring down lugubriously down from posters everywhere like some kind of aristocratic Big Brother - and the very boouent TOP09 party a free run in Prague, where they are likely to do well and, where, conincidentally Topolánek's main party rivals are based.

Our own tour of Moravia also takes in every koupák and swimming lake (otevřené koupalište) for miles around- we even drive across the border into Slovakia and sample Trenčin's large and clean municipal kupalisko sandwiched between fooball stadium, castle and main railway line - although less political reasons than to ensure the kids have something to do. We end, as we began, with the municipal lido in Starý Liskovec , the village on the outskirts of Brno long, which has since swallowed up by the high rise housing estate of Nový Liskovec built in the mid-70s. And, on balance, it is probably actually the best one. Not as clean Trenčin. Slightly less to do for kids, than some of the lidos renovated by ambitious mayors in increasingly sleek and prosperous looking villages around Uherský Brod. And certainly rather less genteel than in spa town of Luhačovic. It's no high rise ghetto, but most people who could afford to do so have long since moved out of the estate and the pool attracts poorly off people who don't have the money, time or paid holiday to go elsewhere. Much to my mother-in-law's disapproval, there are chuge louds of cigarette smoke rising up in the air from the poolside area, as if there was some small factory there. Still, it's shady; there's enough space to swim in the main pool; the children's pool has enough squirtly fountains to please the kids and they do do excellent hotdogs.

I keep my eyes peeled, half watching the kids, half wondering if Topolánek will turn up. Perhaps he has already turned up, incognitio? There is a bloke who looks a bit like him sitting on the lilo on the other side of the pool. But then again, he is reading the crime page of left-wing daily Právo, where would probably be a step too far even for this new style of low-key, politics-free summer election non-campaign.

Czech Republic: Oranges on red alert

2009-08-21T20:55:00.001+01:00

The Czech election campaign is indeed already in full swing - at least if you are a Social Democrat. Not only are party workers - or, possibly paid employees, you never know these days - giving out orange roses at the local supermarket, but ČSSD is already forking out on a national billboard campaign. Most of it is predicatble stuff: caring nurse leaning over old people with a smile and promises of free health care; Mr and Mrs Average and their two kids and some slogan about looking their 'social certainties' paying out of the profits of the electricity oligopoly ČEZ etc etc.

But here's an interesting one: "We will not allow the return of communism". Puzzling, as the Czech Republic is not on the verge of a second Bolshevik Revolution - unless, of course, you believe the more over the top right-wing propaganda that the Social Democrats are themselves a load of old commies, which even the right seem (temporarily) to have given up on ... The real subtext I suppose is that they are telling - well, kind of suggesting to - their voters that they are not going to cosy up to the Czech Republic's hardline Communist Party (KSČM) when, in political reality, they will strike whatever deal they might need to with KSČM to govern if the electoral numbers come good for them in October: something well short of a formal coalition, I should add...

And, of course, that makes perfect sense if you want a country brimming with enough 'social certainties' to ensure that everyone has enough money to keep the wheels of capitalism turning down at the local Interspar. I'm not sure, however, if this billboard wasn't perhaps something of own goal in reminding everyone of this rather obvious home truth of Czech politics.

In cold blood

2009-08-12T20:51:00.000+01:00

Last night I killed an intruder. He had been lurking behind the lace curtain by the open glass doors to the balcony. When he came into the room around 1am, I was ready for him. Shone a torch in his face and, before he could react, struck him with a metal shovel I had got from the grate in case he showed up again. He dropped to floor with a surprising heavy thud.

Emboldened, I went downstairs to deal with his mate, who I knew was waiting down there in the dark.

Damn pesky blighters hornets... But the kids are terrified of them.

This happens so often, it's time I learned to decline the word properly: sršeň, noun (animate), masculine. Zabil jsem sršně

One funeral and a christening

2009-08-10T20:59:00.003+01:00

My wife's grandmother died at the age of 96 in January. She is to be laid to rest in a short ceremony in her home village near Zlín. Relatives from various branches of my wife's family gradually assemble in the muncipal cemetry. It is sunny and the atmosphere is sombre but low key.

Introductions are made, there some conversation and then the priest arrives. He says what his has to say in a straightfoward and dignifed way. There are short speeches by relatives. Flowers are laid, candles are lit. The priest departs and mourners drift off in small groups toward the local pub-restaurant where my mother-in-law has arranged a meal.

The children, who have behaved well throughout, want to walk around the the graveyard, so I agree. It is a municipal cemetry, not very near the church and there are relatively few crosses. One grave belongs to 32 year old who died in December 1914. A small photo set into the grave stone shows a man with a moustache in high collared uniform. Presumably he was killed in the early fighting on Serbian or Galician front which annihilated much of the pre-war Austro-Hungarian military at the start of the Great War. His wife, who died in 1930, and daughter who lived in 1980s are buried with him. There are some recent looking flowers on the grave.

We get to the restaurant. Very oddly, when we get there it is pulsating with very loud, live Gypsy music. Two policeman from the Municipal Police walk out. I assume we've probably got the wrong place, but we walk in anyway to find out what's going on, despite disgruntled local drinkers outside that the place is full of Gypsies.

We are in the right place - and it is full of Gypsies. The pub, has somehow booked meal arranged by my mother-in-law to following the laying to rest alongside a Roma christening celebration There is an interesting kind of symmetry and the music supplied by 2-3 musicams with keyboard and synthaszier is foot-tappingly good, but the noise and ingruousness of it are too much for most of our party, who walk off - despite the landlord's protestations - to see what can be arranged at the village's other hostelry. Unsurprisingly, nothing can done for a party of twenty, so discontented mourners drift back, grumbling that the Roma - while not all of them are bad - have no consideration and shouldn't even be there because they are not local.

Luckily, the landlord has indeed now rescued the situation and agreed with the Roma , there will be no music for an hour and a half while we have our meal. The musicians stop. While my wife talks to elderly great aunts and cousins, I have nothing much to do except keep an eye on the kids and my attention increasingly wanders to the Roma party, who are sitting around a large table in covered courtyard just by the pub's main function room where we are. They seems to have provided their own food: huge quantities of fried or possibly breadcrumbed meat. The women have sequined dresses and one is wearing a satin dress that ressembles a sari, many of the children are dressed in a kind of Sunday best, white-shirts or ribboned party dresses. Most of the men seem to be sitting next door in the bar. There is a lot of raucous sounding conversation, much coming and going, and huges amount of smoking.

It is a world away from the more restrained Czech way of doing things : like some kind of Greek or Middle East event catapulted into Central Europe. Just after 12.00 as we are beginning to leave, the Gypsy music re-starts in earnest. A very large Roma man with moustache pork pie hat and fantastic voice fills the pub with a reverberating and haunting song.this time guests at the christening head into the pub to dance.

"Where did you learn to dance so well?" my wife asks a Roma girl of 7-8 in white frock.

"From my grandma" she replies.

My wife's grandmother would almost certainly not have approved of all this, but both events seem to have gone well.

1989 ABC

2009-07-29T18:46:00.004+01:00

Here I am interviewed on Australian radio's ABC Overnights magazine programme about 1989 in Eastern Europe. Attentive listeners may hear my brain whirring as I try to answers questions about the Berlin Wall and the re-unification of Germany.

My children suggest that next time I use simpler words, stop saying 'er...' and perhaps consider singing a song. Damn good advice.

The recording is from 19 July 2009 and was provided and used by kind permission of ABC.

Croatian greys quit government

2009-07-29T12:58:00.002+01:00

Javno.com reports that the Croatian Pensioners' Party (HSU) have quit the ruling coalition. As they have one deputy that may not make much immediate different but seems is an interesting and direct impact of financial crunch, which has moved down the headlines recently - at least in relation to Eastern Europe.

"ZAGREB, CROATIA 24 July 2009 - The president of the Croatian Pensioners’ Party (HSU) Silvano Hrelja announced today that the party was leaving the leading coalition.
In a conversation for Javno.com, Hrelja revealed that HSU will now join the opposition parties in a battle against the Cabinet’s tricks.

HSU reminds that on Thursday they sent a clear message to the Cabinet that they will not accept a larger tax than the one agreed upon, and that they accept the Cabinet taxing only the difference for amounts over three thousand kuna, at a maximum rate of three percent.
“Considering that the Cabinet did not find the calculation to plug the hole in the budget, they later said that they need to tax the entire amount of all of the salaries and pensions that surpass three thousand kuna, we considered the negotiations over. This sort of burden would mean nearly a four times larger burden for workers and pensioners” say sources from HSU. They consider that the latest Cabinet proposal to also be unacceptable, considering that it is considerable less favourable than the one they had already agreed upon.

“Considering that the Cabinet was at least nine months late to react, and considering that the Minister of Finance Ivan Suker has been deceiving not only the media, and coalition partners, but the whole Croatian public, HSU has brought the unanimous decision to leave the coalition, defending our reputation and continuing the fight for the rights of Croatian pensioners” it says in the report by the central HSU committee, which also seeks the resignation of the Minister of Finance."

TOP cats

2009-07-23T22:14:00.012+01:00

Want to know the name of the man who will determine the future direction of Czech politics? I'll tell you. It's His Serene Highness Prince Karl Johannes Nepomuk Josef Norbert Friedrich Antonius Wratislaw Mena von Schwarzenberg. That's Karel Schwarzenberg to you, me and the Czech elecorate. Mr Schwarzenberg (as I shall call him) is the widely respected and popular Czech independent of aristocratic descent and Swiss-Austrian-Czech background, who is heads the newest party on Czech political scene: TOP09. That might sound like some kind of trade fair but the acronym, in fact, stands for Tradition, Responsibility and Prosperity a slogan vaguely reminiscent of Vichy France, so understandably they are sticking with the corny but safe TOP09.

That lack of class perhaps gives the game away. The party is not really Mr Schwarzenberg's creation, but that of one time Christian Democrat leader and smooth political operator Miroslav Kalousek. Mr Kalousek quit the KDU-ČSL when its scandal hit leader Jiří Čunek finally stepped down to be replaced by older stager and former Foreign Minister, Cyril Svoboda. Mr Svoboda is - at least compared to Mr Čunek - squeakly clean and comes without any of the scandals concerning money in brown envelopes, derailed criminal investigation or populist outbursts about Roma that marked his predecessor inglorious stint at the top of Czech politics. Still, he's not good enough for Mr Kalousek and sundry other heavyweights Christian Democrats because of his obvious inclination to work with the Social Democrats. Kalousek et al are rather more market-oriented and much prefer the right: Mr K was the driving force being some pretty detailed and well thought ideas in the Christian Democrats' 2006 election programme, although he did rather blot his copybook but suddenly deciding that he would break the political impasse after the election by entering a coalition with... the Social Democrats with the tacit parliamentary support of.... the Communists. Kalousek was ousted by an internal rebellion for his pains.

Not the best recommendation for the leader of new centre-right party. Enter Mr Schwarzenberg. Having managed the family estates and supported Czech dissidents in exemplory fashion under communism, served as an advisor to Václav Havel and been elected to the Czech Senate as independent in 2004, Mr S. was propelled into top rank politics when the Greens screwed huge concessions from the Civic Democrats in 2007 to claim the post of Foreign Minister and then played a trump card by choosing the experienced, capable and mutli-lingual Schwarzenberg as Czech Foreign Minister. By all accounts, he did a decent job batting on a very sticky wicket as the Czech EU Presidency - and ultimately the government - slowly fell apart.

Now, however, he has, as he himself observed, staked all his political capital on one spin of the political wheel. TOP09 has a bland but broadly right-of-centre programme, which all about clean and straightfoward politics and getting things done and balancing market forces and social resposibility. And, of course, it's Europhile and Atlanticist. Anyone with a long enough memory will be distinctly reminded of the programme of the now defunct Freedom Union, which broke away from ODS with much hullabaloo in 2008. The early indications for TOP09 - despite being well financed (14 million crowns in donations from businesspeople and wealthy supporters - one of 11 million), having linked up with movement of local independent mayors and, at last, got a new party logo - look less promising. The party has recorded poll preferences of 2% and 3.5%, which suggest a less than stunning entry onto the Czech political stage (if any) in October's early elections.

On the other hand, the party might just be poised for a late and effective pre-election surge: the Freedom Union, you will remember peaked too early in the polls before the 1998 elections and never really recovered. Perhaps TOP09 will match the Czech Greens' rather better timed picking up of momentum in 2006. And, of course, in Mr Schwarzenberg they've got a fascinating political figure. And, you will remember, exiled aristos turned political independents do have a certain political track record in the region. Bulgaria's exiled king Simeon II stormed to political success and turned the Bulgarian party system upside down in 2001 (his former bodyguard's party GERB has now just repeated the trick) and, more recently, the Hungarian Democratic Forum saved itself from political death by fielding Prince George Habsburg, grandson of Hungary's last king and former head of the Hungarian Red Cross, as the number 2 on its European elections list last June.

This seems reflects a rather interesting mix of anti-political perception of remnants of Central European aristocracy as special breed of charismatic and cultured technocrats, who can step down into the grim and graft of the political arena, work a little stardust and provide honest and non-partisan solutions no-one else could manage: their education and polish, so it is said, makes them confident movers and shakers, their cosmopolitan background chimes with ideals of an integrated and united Europe, and their long-settled family wealth makes them impervious to the blandishments of corruptin - after all, why take a bribs when you own large chunks of Switzterland.

I'm not sure if I entirely like this buy this argument, which seems to be just a snobbish veneer applied to what is really an form of anti-political populism. For my money Mr Svoboda was just as a good a Foreign Minister as Mr Schwarzenberg. But it's certainly true that Mr Schwarzenberg and TOP09 - if they can somehow gain the Czech equivalent of Big Mo over the summer - may be the last best hope for the Czech centre-right. On most other scenario, no matter how well the Civic Democrats do - and they are currently ahead in the polls - they will as in 2006 have no allies strong enough to build a parliamentary majority. And that leaves us looking at either a minority Social Democrat(-led) government helped into power by the Communists, or some kind of ill tempered Grand Coalition between Civic and Social Democrats.