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Why voters chose the TOP 09 and Public Affairs parties

19. 7. 2010 / Václav Žák

This year's elections were a result of the way ODS has recently acted while in power, the gross political mistakes done by the Social Democrats during the part year and the emergence of acceptable alternative parties.

The complaint that voters underestimated the traditional parties is almost comic: voters didn't underestimate them, but actually, for the first time, confidently evaluated their experience with the way those parties administrated the government in the past.

When it comes to the mob-like pre-election political discourse, it is hard to compare it with what went on during the Second Republic. Instead of mob-like rhetorics, what we saw was actually just primitivism, which is often the reaction that comes from a change in society's paradigms.

How much better were the slogans from the early 1990s, like "private owner is always better than the State" or "what was stolen has to be returned"? In reality, it was the same nonsense.

After every social revolution, the winners, during the transition period, have to deny the slogans from the previous regime. The fact that in our country this state of affairs have lasted such a long time has more to do with the traditional inability of our families and schools when it comes to passing along to children our historical experiences.

Philosopher Vacláv Bělohradský rather correctly stresses that anti-communism is used in this country in place of the false social consensus that existed before the Velvet Revolution in November 1989. Just that in the early 1990s, when the emerging center-right consensus ruthlessly sacrificed communists in the altar of political success, the philosopher applauded.

Anti-communism certainly didn't fall from the skies in 2002. It was an integral part of the mobilization strategies of all political parties. A flat rejection of capitalism is a typical sign of marketing exaggeration.

That way, Bělohradský undoubtedly inspires some readers, however, aren't his arguments actually more about emotional ploy than logical argumentation?

For example, it is not true that Greece got in trouble because it helped spare the banking sector from the economic crisis and now plans to make workers pay the bill. No, both right and left wing governments have been operating a corruption machinery funded by public funds. To scare voters with the Greek crisis was not a lie, after all we know this kind of capitalism way to well, don't we?

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