Revisiting the Lány putsch

Miloš Zeman reminded listeners of Czech Radio yesterday that when ČSSD won only 20.45% of the vote in the 2013 parliamentary elections, 20 of 33 members of the party's national leadership voted to call on Bohuslav Sobotka to resign as party chairman. Sobotka responded at the time that he would not "back down to pressure, a dirty campaign and undemocratic practices reminiscent of those used by Zdeněk Fierlinger in ČSSD in 1948." Právo and Czech TV took the side of Sobotka and labeled the vote a "coup" or "putsch." "It was no Lány putsch," Zeman told Czech Radio yesterday, and if Sobotka had stepped down then as party chairman, perhaps ČSSD wouldn't have won only 7% of the vote now. Zeman lost the PR battle in a big way in Oct. 2013, but in the waning days of Oct. 2017, he's mounting a new one. He's trying to conclude the "non-putsch" process that he began in 2013. History is repeating itself in ČSSD, even if few outsiders care anymore.