News from the Czech Republic

We  have had the first round of the first direct election of the President of the Czech Republic. 24.2 per cent of the vote went to Milos Zeman and 23.4 per cent to Karel Schwarzenberg (or Prince Schwarzenberg if we are going to be pedantic). So much for the suggestion that the Czech Republic could have the first Jewish Head of State outside Israel.

We have news of Karel Schwarzenberg launching a phone campaign and generally rolling out a personal campaign while Milos Zeman intends to concentrate on the internet and on catching up with his rival  in social networks.

Outgoing President Klaus, unsurprisingly has tried to endorse Milos Zeman. He could not do it openly because of his own position but stated that he would prefer his successor to have spent his life in the country, which excludes Karel Schwarzenberg who has spent much of his life  in Austria, having left Czechoslovakia involuntarily, as he has pointed out, in 1948.

In a Czech Radio debate between the presidential candidates on Wednesday, Mr Schwarzenberg addressed the concerns of a listener who accused him of being a foreigner.

“As for me being labelled an Austrian – it’s true that I lived there for a long time but I have never been a citizen of that country. I have never given up my Czechoslovak citizenship. But I have been faced with this prejudice all my life and I’m used to it. Some things are just thrown at you and there is nothing you can do about it. Another matter altogether is that in 1948 I left this country involuntarily.”

Of course, as Radio Prague, points out President Klaus's endorsement might not be all that useful, especially after the somewhat controversial amnesty announced earlier this month. Schwarzenberg has never hidden his life story so, one must assume that people who vote for him know the facts.(I know that is a tall assumption with an electorate in any country.)

Others are also joining in the fight. Carl Bildt, a man of dubious political attitudes, has pronounced on his blog (in Swedish and sent to me by a regular reader of this blog) that the Czechs really should vote for Karel Schwarzenberg, friend of Carl Bildt.

According to Mr Bildt, his friend is eminently qualified for the position but, alas, has to withstand the poisonous arrows of narrow nationalism. He does rather graciously allow that the choice is the Czech Republic's but adds somewhat grimly that the result will tell "us" something about that country.

The next round is due on January 25 - 26.

So where are we? - 1

President Vaclav Klaus possesses many admirable qualities. The one I admire most is the continuous smoothness of his presentations that includes answers to difficult or, as is the case with many eurosceptic audiences, downright stupid questions.

This afternoon he gave a habitually clear and convincing explanation of all the many things that have gone wrong with the European Union - its centralizing and bureaucratizing tendencies - in the rush towards greater though ultimately unachievable integration. More specifically, he explained very clearly why the eurozone was not optimal either in its extent or its membership while asserting firmly (and, in my humble opinion, correctly) that the political investment in the project was so great that talk of its collapse was akin to a discussion of what kind of pie ought to be flying across the sky.

So where do we go from here, given that the European Union is going the wrong way, given that we know, roughly speaking, what the right way ought to be, and given that the leadership of Europe and to a great extent its people are persisting in following the wrong path? To that President Klaus apparently has no answer, no matter how often he repeats his cogent analysis. (It is, of course, possible that there is an answer in his latest book, Europe: The Shattering of Illusions, which he was launching, but I have not yet read it.)

At the same time, there is something admirable in President Klaus's refusal to pander to his audience, be they EU grandees or a collection of eurosceptics of varying degree, who usually want to hear their own views confirmed and their own prejudices reasserted.

Vaclav Klaus absolutely refused to discuss internal British politics, slyly turning every question to his own experiences with Czechoslovakia and its disintegration into the two component parts. He did, however, remind people with great firmness that the Conservative Party had expected him to hold out against all pressure and against his country's constitutional rules over the signing of the Lisbon Treaty in order to help them to win the 2010 election though they, themselves, had given up any semblance of a fight. (I wrote about that on this blog and, before that, on EU Referendum, my erstwhile blogging home.)

He also said that while he could see that the UK might, for its selfish reasons, want to be out of the EU, the Czech Republic's selfish reasons wanted the UK to stay in. He was challenged on this by Lord Stoddart of Swindon.

Briefly, the two arguments ran thus: President Klaus appears to think (and who knows what he really thinks on the subject) that the more countries there are in the EU, the less likely is it to integrate. That is our old friend, the widening versus deepening debate, which has been settled some time ago by the inevitability of every new widening being used as an excuse for further deepening. But, more importantly, said Klaus, we must have countries like Britain, countries that have genuine democratic traditions and notions, inside the EU as that will help to reverse the pernicious process of centralizing and bureaucratizing.

Lord Stoddart, on the other hand, thinks that Britain's exit from the EU would be of great benefit not only to this country  but also to others like the Czech Republic who could then follow the British example and find a way out. Maybe it could even join the Commonwealth, suggested the noble peer with a smile. (I can't quite imagine the Czech Republic wanting to be in an organization with such luminaries of democracy as Nigeria or Rwanda but the obsession with the Commonwealth is one that needs a separate set of arguments.)

Once again President Klaus refused to pander to his audience, reminding us all, instead, that Britain actually had the choice of a different kind of European "integration" through EFTA, which it abandoned, preferring to join the EEC. (Lord Stoddart loudly pointed out that he did not prefer it and how true that is. He has been an opponent of Britain's participation in the European project from the beginning.)

I find it hard to believe that President Klaus really believes that Britain's continued membership of the EU would have the desired effect of turning the process of ever greater integration back towards the creation of a low government intervention free market agreement. A swift look at the history of Britain's membership should disabuse him of such a notion. Nor is he under any illusion about the Party Formerly Known As Conservative or the present government. He knows full well that he can hope for nothing from that quarter. Then again, he also knows that his position is very lonely and there is no help anywhere at the moment. One can only admire him for his tenacity (as well as the smoothness of his presentation).

Worth noting

President Klaus laid into the UN (having obviously decided that the EU is just too small for him) and its pretensions to wanting to run the world's economy. Given that this is an organization that cannot run its own, admittedly expensive, office, its hubris is quite extraordinary.

The solution to dealing with the global economic crisis, Klaus told the U.N. General Assembly, did not lie in "creating new governmental and supranational agencies, or in aiming at global governance of the world economy."

"On the contrary, this is the time for international organizations, including the United Nations, to reduce their expenditures, make their administrations thinner, and leave the solutions to the governments of member states," he said.

Klaus appeared to be responding to the address of the Swiss president of the General Assembly, Joseph Deiss, who said on Thursday at the opening of the annual gathering of world leaders in New York that it was time for the United Nations to "comprehensively fulfill its global governance role."

It has not global governance role. That was not why the UN was set up and being an unaccountable organization packed with nasty bloodthirsty kleptomaniacs it can have none. Why is it that none of our politicians has the guts to say what President Klaus says. Why do I even ask?

Dan Mitchell has called on every patriotic American to support the President .... of the Czech Republic. Attaboy!

What a shame, eh?

ConHome has a rather downbeat posting about the Czech President that quotes the Financial Times. "Vaclav Klaus may not save Britain from Lisbon after all". Well, no. In the first place, it might be a good idea to get the situation right.

The fate of the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty lies with the Czech Constitutional Court, whither it had been returne by a group of Czech Senators. The Court will decide within the next six months on whether the treaty is compatible with the Czech Constitution. If, as expected, they will say yes, President Klaus will find himself in a difficult position: by not signing he will be going against the will of both Houses of the Czech Parliament and the Constitutional Court. No president in a democracy can hold that position for very long. He will most probably sign.

The Boss on EURef has also written about this, referring to the Guardian and the BBC.

We do not know what was in the letter the Conservative Party appears to have sent him but his opinion of the British political process does not seem to be very high. Presumably, it is not terribly high when he thinks about the British Conservative Party.

Vaclav Klaus, the Eurosceptic Czech president who had indicated he would delay ratifying the treaty until after the British general election, indicated he might change his mind. "There will never be another referendum in Europe," he told the BBC after the Irish vote. "The people of Britain should have been doing something much earlier and not just now, too late, saying something and waiting for my decision."

Well, indeed. Above all, why should President Klaus go out of his way to save the Conservative Party's credibility?

Mark Wallace of the Taxpayers' Alliance is running around the Conservative Party Conference getting people to sign a postcard to President Klaus, pleading with him to save Britain, the Conservative Party and David Cameron. Some have signed, others like Boris Johnson, have refused. (Here is a picture of Douglas Carswell signing.)

Too little, too late. We suggested a campaign of this kind almost four months ago but the TPA was too busy telling the world that nobody had thought of the European issue and its problems until they came on the scene. My personal attempt to interest them in the idea of writing to President Klaus were met with charming and dismissive smiles.

Now that President Klaus has made it clear that he is not that interested in saving people who cannot save themselves, at least, not at the expense of a possible impeachment, that delightful looking postcard will do very little beyond getting media time for the TPA.