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Polite Fight

11. 4. 2010

Cvek also thinks "the themes were properly chosen and the moderator managed to screen out both sides' demagoguery and the candidates", adding that "Jiří Paroubek and Petr Nečas, up to a certain point, gave me the impression of being both nice and rather refined".

Nevertheless, Cvek complains that "unfortunately, they sometimes wrenched, rowdily jumped into each other's speeches, the climax being the showing off of papers with numbers used to attack the other side", also pointing to the fact that this was followed by monologues without any regard to whether the viewer could understand a word of what they were screaming at each other. Cvek believes it was a farce, in which both politicians were prepared to parody themselves and Czech politics in general.

"The flashing out of papers with numbers and graphics, in which one can write whatever data one wants, is a huge abuse of political discussion", argues Cvek. And asks: "is there really anything which could gain new voters?", also wanting to know if those politicians believe they convince the middle class and the non-ideological voter to choose them.

Cvek writes about the huge contrast that exists between a debate between the two leaders of the biggest political parties when it is done by someone who forces them to react in an intelligent way and in a situation where they ignore the moderator's requests and control, as happened towards the second part of the discussion. He thinks it is interesting how none of the sides decided to throw mud against the other, probably to avoid being caught in their own.

Cvek concludes that not even from the most dispassionate moments of the debate nothing crucial came up: "everyone as usual want to fight against corruption", although naturally they differ in their political priorities, Paroubek having mentioned the elimination of the health services fee (of around 1 euro per doctor visit) and the creation of a 13th pension payment, while Nečas "once again was not able to name who are his shadow ministers, because he is not long in the position of leader of the Civic Democrats (and nobody knows for how much longer) and because potential future ministers, like for example Ivan Langer, could all of a sudden fall, before the elections".

Cvek pokes fun at both having "buried State graduation exams", for it is probably a trendy opinion right now. The ODS leader bragged about his party having been always against the State-controlled graduation exams, but caretaker Minister of Education Miroslava Kopicová, who was in the same post during the previous center right government of Mirek Topolánek and was indicated by his party to the current one, actually supported and campaigned for the State examination and now looks like a fool. State graduation tests are even part of the official program of Jan Fischer's interim government, all approved and blessed by the two parties that are now fighting the very same examination method. "So what?", illustrates Cvek.

Both leaders talked about majority governments, but Cvek says he would be surprised if any of them finds a way to form a government with a solid mandate. However, Cvek thinks that it will all depend on the post-elections negotiations and that probably this is why Paroubek appraised his rival's 18 years experience in politics. He questions whether Nečas will survive in the leadership post after the elections, though.

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