Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Czech presidential election coming up

Do we care? Well, we should because the President has a certain amount of power in the Czech Republic and is, therefore, a member of our own real government. Also, the only rational politician, Vaclav Klaus, has to step down and is ineligible for re-election, which is clearly a bad thing. On the other hand, he could not put his ideas into practice in any case and when no longer a President will have more time to write and lecture, which is clearly a good thing.

Here we have a list of candidates, none of whom are particularly inspiring. This is the first direct presidential election in the Czech Republic and the two front runners are Milos Zeman, former Prime Minister (1998 -2002), former leader of the Social-Democrats and present leader of the Party of Civic Rights and Jan Fischer, also former Prime Minister (caretaker government of 2009 - 2010), former President of the Statistical Office and former member of the Communist Party, though that is a widespread phenomenon among East Europeans of a certain age. As against that, Mr Zeman's party has been accused of taking money from Russian lobbyists through a colleague of his, Miroslav Ć louf.

Mr Zeman is known as an outspoken man, who agrees with President Klaus on the nonsensical aspect of man-made global warming though not on the European Union. Mr Fischer, on the other hand, might be the first Jewish President of a country outside Israel as his father is Jewish and is, in fact, a Holocaust survivor.

First round of voting will be on January 11 - 12.

So there we are. Now you know.

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