Populism in Central and Eastern Europe – Challenge for the Future?

46 Populism in Central and Eastern Europe – Challenge for the Future
including Vít Bárta – éminence grise and later the
official leader of the party, which interpreted its
activities as an effort for transparent sponsoring
of political parties. As a reaction to this many of
the previous civic activists left the party.
The first step towards a higher public profile for
the party was the 2009 European parliament
election. Although they did not manage to enter
the parliament, thanks to an extensive electoral
campaign they were able to gain wider public and
media attention on the national level for the first
time, and also get support from several public
figures, e.g. former journalist and writer Radek
John who eventually became a chairman of the
party. The first real electoral success came in
the 2010 national elections. Public Affairs made
use of a dissatisfaction of former voters of the
two largest parties – Social Democrats and Civic
Democrats – and gained nearly 11% of the votes
and, thus, entered the Chamber of Deputies (the
lower chamber of the Parliament of the Czech
Republic). Afterwards the party became a member
of the center-right government coalition, led
by liberal-conservative Civic Democratic Party
(Občanská demokratická strana) (see Černoch et
al 2011).
Public Affairs characterize themselves as an explicitly
centrist party and refuse a clear attachment
to the traditional right or left. Their program is eclectic,
concentrated on bringing (often simplistic)
solutions to concrete problems, without any obvious
ideological affiliation. The only distinguishable
slightly coherent focus of the party is their anti-establishment
and anti-partisan appeal, represented
by a demand for the deepening of democratic
tools, more direct democracy and no corruption in
public funding. Their main slogan in 2010 electoral
campaign was ‘remove all the old dinosaurs from
politics’ – a claim for the personal exchange within
political structure (Černoch et al. 2011).
Public Affairs emerged in Czech political scene
as a party with very strong anti-corruption appeal
and actually, as members of government, they
also drafted some anti-corruption bills. Yet, paradoxically,
it was they who turned out to engage in
many of corruption scandals of the current Czech
government. In the most notorious case, the party
leader Vít Bárta was convicted of bribery and
conditionally sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment
in April 2012. As a result the party effectively
broke up, with some members of Public
Affairs leaving the party and starting a new, similarly
populist, parliament faction called ‘LIDEM’
(For the people) which remained as a member
of the government coalition. The rest of Public
Affairs is currently in opposition.
Conclusion
Populism in Czech party politics takes the two
most visible forms with different impacts on
Czech political life. On the one hand it is the radical
right-wing populist Worker’s Party (of Social
Justice), openly xenophobic, racist and authoritarian
party which presents itself as a true advocate
of common working people (of Czech
nationality) against a corrupt establishment and
inadaptable layabouts and criminals. Although
the party has never gained enough votes for
parliamentary representation, thanks to organizing
controversial public demonstrations with
high police and media attention and misusing
a generally bad attitude of Czech public towards
Roma population, they are able to significantly
influence public discourse on dealing with the
so called Roma problem. On the other hand it
is the new populist protest party Public Affairs,
making use of the general dissatisfaction of the
Czech public with the political establishment and
the ‘old‘ parties. Public Affairs are not racist,
nor authoritarian but they share anti-elitist and
anti-establishment populist appeal with its radical
right-wing counterpart. As members of the
government coalition after 2010 elections, Public
Affairs had a serious potential to influence Czech
politics but after a series of corruption scandals
and break-up of the party, their current role in the
political system is rather limited.