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The Green paradoxes

21. 7. 2010

The first paradox is that the Green party was cruelly punished by voters, even though they had been for the first time, after years in existence, part of the parliament and also for the first time part of a government coalition. They had their ministers and even expressive members. They got under their responsibility the important resorts of environment, foreign affairs and education.

Another paradox is that, even if Martin Bursík was more or less successful in his post and in appeared to be pretty popular in opinion polls, his party ended up with less than half the votes they had last time.

The rumour is that the reason for the Greens failure was a result of the constant infighting among its members, which split the party. Some MPs even left the party. Just that in 2006 the Greens were even more internally disarrayed with infighting than in 2010. The party leaders this time successfully got rid of their opponents.

Green party voters are not bothered by a lack of consensus within the party. For the Greens supporters it is essential that the party stays an open democratic forum, so that it can offer creative people who have a relationship with nature and also from various minorities, and also that it has a solid political program.

Where have the Green party's voters gone in 2010? To be able to answer this question, we have to go back to 2006. At that time, our political scene saw the fall of pro-liberal Freedom Union party (Unie Svobody) and their voters, who didn't like the center right Civic Democrats (ODS), looked for an alternative. Providentially, the Greens caught the support of a group of liberals like Bursík and ended up with a huge support from the media. The Greens became media stars and the Freedom Union's voters got them elected.

During this year's elections the Greens could have used the same trick as last time. It would have been enough if they had realized where the undecided voters are. The abomination of Mr Paroubek, his political and even personal styles could have been used by the Green party to get some 10 percent of the votes.

But in 2010 those liberal voters decided to support the TOP 09 and Public Affairs parties, forgetting about the Greens. Bursík was always cold towards social problems and even his political representation emphatically made that clear. Before the 2006 elections, during the whole time he was part of the government and even before this year's elections he repeatedly refused to be part of any coalition that would include the Communists, even if at the price of not being able to push ahead his ecological program. Paradoxically, the Green party was not supported this year either by the liberal voters of the center right, not those from the center left.

What happened in 2010 is that two center right parties who advertised galore got all the media attention and nobody from television or newspapers remembered they existed. What is also a paradox is that the factual winner of this recent elections was the Greens former Minister of Foreign Affaris, Karel Schwarzenberg, who caught younger voters with his smooth and humorous demeanour.

The Greens are now trembling and will continue to fall. It is possible to expect that Bursík's liberals will leave the party little by little, because their politics won't bring any voter to the party. I believe that it won't take too long and that liberal voters will continue in their pilgrimage from the OH party, last decade, through ODA, the Freedom Union, the 4K (quadruple coalition), through the Greens and on to the next.

The last paradox is in the fact that social, economic, ecological and even political pressure from the so-called "pro-Green" crowd will not, thanks to the bad climate for environmental issues in this new government, exist. There won't be anyone within the power structures to push for them. What awaits the Green party within the next few years is the diversion of their funds, name and image. Their fall will be stopped only when people with real ecological and social feelings take the party back into their hands. Perhaps that could happen already 4 years from now. Who knows?

Vytisknout