In October, Toi d’Europe interviewed young Czech after the legislatives czech elections. The populism party (ANO) won a lot of seat. Kristina Boudová explained her opinion about this topic. This Friday the Presidential election are coming. Time to discover again her Testimony:
What do you think about the election in your country?
As we know the results now, the results of the elections here in Czechia show that people got tired of the traditional parties. We have seen the big success of ANO, which is a movement made by the second richest man in the republic and the Pirate party, which is a newbie to the Parlementary politics, and the rise of SPD which is a radical right party against immigration. From my point of view the results are full of paradox, as the Social Democrats, which were in the government last four years were very unsuccessful, even though their governing was quite successful, stable and they’ve been able to pass some measures from their programme. Another paradox is the success of SPD, which is an anti-immigration party led by a half-Japanese who has been lobbying in the past for softer laws for immigrants. The big paradox is the victory of ANO, as their leader is accused of abusing EU funds and being a confident to the secret police in the communist era. I guess the election shows the fatigue of the society which is surprising as the country is doing quite well.
What do you think it will change for your country? For EU?
I don’t actually think that our country will change much with the elections, or maybe I only hope so. The path the country is going to take will be given by which government will be chosen, which seems to be complicated as no one from the democratic parties, which only have not even a half of the representatives, do not want to cooperate with the winner of the elections. When actually a government is formed, it will be either some of the regular parties with ANO, which will slow down the social politics from the last years and move more towards the right wing. If no one will do that, ANO will have to form a minority government which will have a strong oposition and there would have to be new elections (only if the president will not allow them. The presidential elections are in January, so that’s another thing that can change the politics in here, as the actual president is trying to help ANO). Everything actually depends on Babiš and our president, but I don’t think that anything will change, for the important things as our foreign policy or economy.
What are the main thema in the campaign? Did you agree with it?
The main topics of our elections were either migration (most of the parties against migration or the quotas on refugees, but also the labor migration from not-EU countries as Ukraine), e-government, social politics and minorities and direct democracy via referendum. I don’t really think you can agree or disagree with a topic, you can disagree with the opinions, and I naturally don’t agree with radical parties such as SPD which is against Islam. Otherwise there was quite a cohesion in the democratic parties and differences were minor. I didn’t really agree with SPD or the Pirates on the direct democracy as our system is not fitting for it and I think referendums can only be used for local decisions.
What are your expectations about this election?
My expectations were wrong as I hoped in lower result of ANO and SPD and bigger for the other parties. I expect that Babis will lose the immunity he gets as the member of the Parliament and he will be charged for his crimes. Then I think we can have a stable politics since another elections, the traditional parties will reform and start again and I hope that in the future our choices would be wiser and we as a society will not fall for nice words, lies and we will continue in our democratic path.
Testimony by Kristina Boudová, student of International area studies
