WHAT'S ON BRITSKÉ LISTY

The Elections Didn't End Up Badly

31. 5. 2010 / Jan Keller

Basically there are two possible ways how things will now develop. The first one is that the Right fulfills all the promises it made to voters and the whole society. And finally makes the tax system more transparent, supports local enterprises, increase people's purchase power, ensures that it is worthy to work (in charge: Petr Nečas, schedule: rather within months than years).

In case the Right happens to fulfill all that -- and we should honestly wish for it to happen -- then we will be apparently the only country in Europe which comes out from the global economic crisis strenghtened. Only a fool would not want something like that.

It is in the own interests of the Right that everybody made sure that it fulfills its promises fast. So as to not have to repeat that situation where Topolanek's ODS trampled on virtually all points of his famous "Contract with the Citizens".

The second possibility is that the Right lied to voters and will not be able, or in the end even willing, to fulfill their promises. In that case, as I have pointed, everybody will be able to realize that the right wing parties simply betrayed them. That means the Left would prime for an unprecedented win in the next elections.

The Left will be much better, for the current elections took away from them a bunch of handicaps. The not so significant weakening of the Communist party eliminates the arguments of those, who wanted to scare people out with the return of the previous regime. Social Democrats got rid of Paroubek and Tvrdík, who -- as it is now evident -- significantly lowered their chances (perhaps even up to 10%). Hopefully the Social Democrats will recover, though their actions discouraged a lot of potential leftist voters.

The public also had the opportunity to get rid of the last illusions it may have had about the potential of Miloš Zeman -- harmful illusions, which took away almost 5% of leftist voters. And the odd Green Party now will leave high politics for good, which is a relief not only for the Left, but I am also convinced that even for Nature...

I personally believe that the most likely scenario will be the second one. For I know that the indebting of a State is not the result of too extravagant social policies. This can be demonstrated in numbers and in comparing with other European states.

However, if the Right will not do something very urgently to combat the large scale corruption we have, but will only further impoverish those in an already delicate social situation, and will allow the public sector to get even less funded, then the State debt will go up in the same level as the dissatisfaction of an increasingly more important and numerous population group. It's no longer only about the lower classes, but more and more about the middle classes -- which were this year's right wing voters.

If Europe will not fall apart, the Right will not be able to even think about using some non-democratic to disguise their failure. We can argue that the changes that will be made by the center right government will be irreversible. I don't believe so. If there is political will, there are ways to correct anything done by politicians, using democratic procedures, if they happen to be unacceptable to the majority of people.

So we should all celebrate this year's elections together with the Right. Our country's situation was very misty, like this year's Spring. Sunny elections, which didn't leave us with another stalemate, is a wonderful sunshine.

Vytisknout