Tired of Trumpism, Prague edition
Tired of Trumpism, Prague edition
Becherovka in Prague
As I sip my chilled Becherovka—a herbal Czech digestif similar to Jägermeister but not, usually, consumed in a session of rowdy shots—after another long day, my thoughts turn from tired, whiny children; endless dirty dishes; and laundry to another type of chaos and mess—one that doesn’t include sticky-handed hugs to sweeten the deal.
Another round of Czech parliamentary elections has come and gone, and the Czechs have jumped on the dubious “populist” bandwagon with their own collection of brow-raising candidates.
We have Andrej Babis, the billionaire businessman with questionable enterprises who has been described as a cross between Berlusconi and Trump. The front man of the victorious ANO party (an acronym for “dissatisfied citizens taking action” in Czech), Babis is currently under investigation for corruption, because a sizeable portion of some hefty EU subsidies the Czech Republic received during his tenure as minister of finance just happened to fatten up his own business interests.
There are probably other reasons for the probe, but that one strikes me as the biggest red flag. Babis was deposed as minister of finance only to campaign as head of the ANO party in last week’s elections. He is also known for responding to requests to disclose his financial information with—loosely translated—“Like, I’m sorry, but my earnings are none of your business,” which amuses many Czechs, and horrifies others. Sound familiar?
After watching the Trump circus evolve and devolve across the pond, it seems to me that the trend for flouting archaic values such as good-willed transparency or boring political ethics is contagious. And I have had the dubious honor of experiencing this phenomenon first-hand in not just one, but two elections. I was born to Czech immigrant parents in the United States, but came over to live in the Czech Republic in my early 20s, and except for five years back in Pennsylvania, I have lived here ever since. I am now based in Prague with my American husband (whom I imported from the U.S.) and our two young children.
In the Czech version, too, there was a disturbingly familiar disregard for facts. The Freedom and Direct Democracy party, led by Tomio Okamura, a Korean-Japanese-Czech businessman-turned-politician, got an electoral boost too. He ran on a radical anti-refugee, anti-immigrant platform, with his campaign billboards declaring: “No to Islam! No to Terrorists!” (This, in a country where Muslims make up less than 0.2 percent of the population, many of them brought in by multinational corporations as part of a skilled workforce.) But xenophobia is a strong brew, and it helped Okamura’s party net fourth place.
The center-right Civic Democrats placed a distant second; the rest of the votes were scattered among an array of newer, upstart parties, including the anti-establishment, anti-EU Pirate Party, which placed third. The fractured vote helped Andrej Babis secure a landslide.
Why did our Berlusconi/Trump hybrid sweep the elections, with 29.6 percent of the vote? Perhaps because the overlooked, underappreciated, hard-working folk decided to go for the wildcard, outspoken outsider, who had somehow given them hope for a better future. Have we grown so jaded that the used-car salesman’s spiel seems plausible? Or do we believe that an underdog outsider will save the day?
Some people argue that in the long run, this electoral experiment will shake up the system in a way that—once the dust has settled—will leave us better off. Tossing back the rest of my nightcap, I sincerely hope they will be proven right.
The big question is, what will “better off” look like? Will it be a country whose government, economy, and citizenry are all in a functioning, stable, and ultimately happier place? Or will it simply mean older and wiser, grateful to have survived an ill-advised experiment? Or will it mean limping along in social and political chaos as we raise a glass stoically and say “Na zdravi”—to health?
We’ll see. In the meantime, Na zdravi!