Zeman & Klaus: Two for the price of one

26.08.2013 - EB

Czechs who voted for Miloš Zeman in the presidential election and have been applauding his every move must face the reality that they are getting Václav Klaus as an extra part of the deal. Zeman is exercising a policy of divide and conquer on the Left, and Klaus is helping him to do the same thing on the Right. Anyone who opposes them is being maligned as weak, elitist or anti-democratic. Many of them are already on the Klaus *hit list, more formally known as the list of Havelian truth-and-loveniks. A broad coalition of the Zeman and Klaus forces after the elections would lead to a return of the era of the "opposition agreement," which Jana Bobošíková referred to as a period of prosperity and stability. It's true - "prosperity" for the Five Families and other oligarchs who used the "stability" to divide up the economy. They (minus Zdeněk Bakala and his acolytes) are the ones who will benefit the most from a return to a Zeman-Klaus tandem. It's by no means Zeman's "bottom 10m" who will prosper the most, but rather the top 100.

Glossary of difficult words

to malign someone - to speak about someone in a spitefully critical manner; 

*hit list - a play on words - 1) a shit list is a list of people whom one dislikes or plans to harm; 2) a hit list is list of people to be killed for criminal or political reasons;

truth-and-lovenik - (derived in the same way as peacenik) our translation of "Pravdoláskař," which is used negatively to refer to prominent followers of Václav Havel;

opposition agreement - a political agreement between ČSSD and ODS that lasted from 1998 to 2002; 

acolyte - an assistant or follower.



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