WHAT'S ON BRITSKÉ LISTY

And Who is Kicking Whom?

7. 6. 2010 / Karel Dolejší

An honest description of the issue would certainly need more than the three paragraphs Kroh spent in his whole message -- including the exhortative appeal for leftist intellectuals to "stop kicking Paroubek".

Despite the many attempts from various authors, so far there hasn't been yet an analysis, which could explain this year's Social Democratic self-destructive victory in the proper context: either national (the fatal errors of the post-Zeman Social Democratic party), geographical (the decline of most socialist parties within the EU) and historical (universal crisis of the welfare state model). In just a few words: the real lesson is missing. But in the meantime Kroh says: You have all just kicked Paroubek and that already doesn't matter anymore -- start dedicating your attention to what the center-right government must do. Period.

I agree with the majority of that Michael Kroh once wrote on the issue of European unification. However, I have to deeply disagree with his latest variation on the theme "what was, has been, so let it be", which in practice asks that all those fatal mistakes done by the Social Democrats are let go in silence and also with his view that not only ČSSD, but with the party also the whole leftist-oriented public obediently shifted politically to the right. And I cannot but unequivocally and strongly reject the way the author generalized the post-election critics of recent events in the strongest of the Czech leftist parties.

Kroh certainly has the right to defend his personal opinion that ČSSD should now solve basically the sama agenda as the center-right coalition, just that with an emphasis on different things. If that is supposed to be all, then it is the simplest, even most primitive way, how to see the whole thing... but so be it. But what he doesn't have the right for sure is to dismiss all those who, different from him, really tried to find out where, not only during this election's campaign, were the mistakes made. He cannot disqualify whatever search for alternative explanations to the ones he himself, with his rather coarse gesture, offered.

The authoritativeness with which Kroh tried to do so is another thing that is a bit difficult to reconcile with. Not only his attempt is factually dishonest, it also presents itself as the only really reasonable and possible perspective. Such limitation of boundaries in a field, where it is not very clear what game is being played on it, is cause for concern and poses the question of where the author gets his conviction that he can deal with us this way.

In Kroh's text's third paragraph he on top of it all even quietly huddles the notion that a center-right coalition of ODS, TOP 09 and VV solves our current problems, that in their strongly ideological agenda we can find some dormant rationality somewhere. However, that's yet another rather unclear assumption, because there are very different diagnosis out there.

Yes, to "kick" Paroubek indeed has no point; a person with a minimum of logics, though, recognizes that from that premise doesn't necessarily entail, by any means, the conclusion that we should now just deal with the center-right government coalition agenda. It is just the legitimate, but solely personal and rather unprivileged opinion from Michael Kroh.

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