Whatever the question, it is hard to imagine the Communist Party to be the answer

Democratic Failure In The Czech Republic Authors A Communist Party Revival

By Doug Bandow

The Czech Republic is one of the most successful members of the former Soviet Empire.  Dominated by the U.S.S.R. after the Red Army overran the country in the closing days of World War II, Prague was a freedom domino in 1989, joining its neighbors in overthrowing Communist rule.  Yet Czechs with whom I recently spoke fear liberty is in retreat.  Indeed, the former Communist Party might reenter government after elections later this month.

Czechoslovakia was one of several countries created in 1918 out of the remains of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Cynics called the new entities “states for a season,” doomed to extinction.

The party’s revival is particularly incongruous because the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, or KCSM, remains largely unreconstructed.  Throughout its rule the Party “interned more than 250,000 political prisoners,” noted foreign correspondent James Kirchick, yet after the Velvet Revolution offered only a perfunctory apology for its discreditable role.  In 1996 the communists channeled George Orwell in calling their 40 year rule “one of the greatest periods of social and economic growth.”

In fact, the KCSM is the only Communist Party in Eastern Europe which still unashamedly calls itself Communist.  Kirchick explained, “while Communist Parties in the other countries in the former Eastern bloc dissolved (Poland), transformed into social democratic parties (Hungary), or merged with pre-existing ones (Slovakia), the Czech Communists did no such thing,” instead digging in and maintaining their party’s “doctrinaire Marxist outlook.”  The Party even offered its condolences to North Korea, which maintains a particularly virulent form of totalitarianism, after the death of dictator Kim Jong-il in 2011.

The Party has benefited from the collapse of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS)—the leading party on the right since it was founded by Klaus more than two decades ago—which is polling just six percent.  TOP 09 is in better shape, but not much.  Polls put the two parties at under 20 percent combined.

Scandal has taken its toll.  Right-leaning Prime Minister Petr Necas was forced to resign after his chief of staff and mistress allegedly used military intelligence to spy on Necas’ wife.  Moreover, the Czech Republic has only begun to recover from a recession stretching back to 2011.  Last year seven of ten Czechs declared the economy to be bad or very bad.  In July the finance ministry downgraded growth predictions for 2013 and 2014.  While the last government’s austerity program has maintained the country’s fiscal strength—Prague’s debt to GDP ratio is just 40 percent, less than half the EU average—spending cuts angered pensioners and others.

The Communist Party hopes to ride these grievances back into power.  Vice Chairman Jiri Dolejs said the idea of allowing the KCSM into government is “losing its taboo as a topic for conversation.”  The Social Democrats long refused to cooperate with the KCSM in parliament, though they joined in municipal and regional coalitions.  However, desire for power is causing the CSSD to rethink its policy.  Social Democratic Senator Jiri Dienstbier, Jr., who ran unsuccessfully for president, told Kirchick:  “If it is a democratic party, we should treat it as any other democratic party, including coalition potential.”  In Dienstbier’s view, “it’s not like they pose a threat to the democratic system in the country.”

The KCSM holds 11 percent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the highest share for former communists in any European parliament.  In last year’s regional elections the Communists made major gains, winning two (of 13) regions and forming governing coalitions with the CSSD in ten regions. With the Social Democrats receiving close to a third and the Communists topping 20 percent in polls for the upcoming parliamentary election, the new government seems likely to involve either formal coalition or informal cooperation between these two parties.

However, President Zeman might help derail this simple outcome.  Once a Social Democrat, he has established the Party of Citizens’ Rights Zemanovci (SPOZ), which appears likely to pass the five percent threshold and win seats in parliament for the first time.  Other possible entrants include the Christian Democrats, the Greens, and a new party, Action of Dissatisfied Citizens 2011 (ANO 2011), established by billionaire entrepreneur Andrej Babis.  Earlier this year he purchased two of the Czech Republic’s most important newspapers, triggering comparisons to Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, a billionaire businessman and press magnate who ended up prime minister.  The more divided this month’s vote, the more complex the coalition-building necessary to form a government.

Still, the mere possibility of a Communist revival generates concern.  Complained Kirchick:  “To those Czechs who still recite Havel’s 1989 campaign slogan ‘Love and truth conquer lies and hatred’ without irony, this should be nothing short of a national crisis.”

The Czech people long have played an outsize role in Europe.  Independence-minded Czechs helped destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  A weak Czechoslovakia encouraged German aggression in World War II.  In 1968 reformist Czechs staged an early challenge—heroic but forlorn—to Soviet power.  Two decades later the next generation helped topple the Evil Empire.  In the years since Czech President Vaclav Klaus resisted ever greater centralization of power in Brussels.

Again the Czech people are threatening dramatic action—but in the wrong direction, to hand the Communist Party a share of power.  It’s not what one would expect of the heirs of the Velvet Revolution.  Warned Kirchick:  “The return to government of communists in a former Soviet-bloc country would be a jolt for Europe, a blow to the project of improving democracy and free markets—and, in its way, a reflection of the cost of Europe’s current turmoil.”

The Czech Republic’s future obviously is up to the Czech people.  That includes choosing their next government.  Nevertheless, a free people should ponder carefully before entrusting their future to the party which so badly failed them in the past.  Whatever the question, it is hard to imagine the Communist Party to be the answer.