Eurasia Press & News
Ahead of the October elections, a new liberal party is looking to mobilise segments of the Czech public who have given up on politics to depose the governing ANO party. But LidePRO is finding the pandemic an obstacle to its grassroots campaign.
Over a quarter of a million people filled the streets of Prague in the summer of 2019 to demand the resignations of populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis and his conniving ally President Milos Zeman. The student leader of those protests now hopes to take the pair on by steering a new political party into October’s parliamentary elections. But what chance does a new liberal party have?
Mikulas Minar spent the months following the 2019 protests, dubbed Milion chvilek (A Million Moments), demanding the fragmented Czech opposition get its act together to put up a real challenge to billionaire Babis’s ANO party. It was something of a shock, then, that just as opposition parties appeared to finally be making headway after years of failure, he announced his plan to make the jump from protest leader to politician.
Two opposition coalitions, the centre-right Spolu and liberal Pirates/Stan, have been formed in recent months. Polls suggest each could win 20-25 per cent of the vote, around the same level to which ANO’s support has declined amid the government’s erratic handing of the COVID-19 pandemic. That suggests that, for the first time in years, the formation of a government without the populist Babis is possible.
However, Minar and his cohorts believe that these coalitions must seek out new sources of support to depose ANO. “Whether it’s voters of government parties or mobilising non-voters, I didn’t hear a single plan to do it,” the 28-year-old former protest leader insisted as he announced at the start of December his plan to launch the LidePRO movement.
Minar hopes to recruit a line-up of prominent candidates and secure 500,000 signatures, at which point he will turn the movement into a party and enter the election.
David Ondracka, the high-profile former head of Transparency International CZ, has joined the effort. The anti-corruption campaigner tells BIRN that just 4 million of Czechia’s 8 million potential voters currently participate in the political process, with the rest having given up on seeing any change.
LidePRO is eyeing “half a million people aged 18-29 that see no reason to participate,” Ondracka says, adding that “the middle class who feel they have no party to vote for currently” are another major target.
Seeking a surge
However, the pandemic is proving to be a big obstacle, disrupting the party’s strategy to reach these people via events at the grassroots level across the country. In addition, the media focus is dominated by the pandemic.
“Public attention is focused on COVID and vaccinations, and any new political formation would struggle to win attention in these conditions,” Lubomir Kopecek, a professor of political science at Masaryk University, tells BIRN.
By early February, LidePRO had collected just 27,500 or so signatures, and the line-up of high-profile members remains limited. “We’ve struggled to raise the wave we’re seeking,” Ondracka admits.
LidePRO’s leaders have said from the beginning that they will not push the project forward should they fail to hit their target. Ondracka confirms that, but points out that things can change quickly in politics and that the work will continue.
The movement is now publishing its policy proposals and it hopes that a focus on local issues – the debt traps that have snared hundreds of thousands in the regions or the poor health and transport infrastructure that blights many areas – will strike a chord with disenchanted populations across Czechia.
Despite the struggle to gain traction, Ondracka – who was once invited by Babis to join the government as interior minister – insists there’s still plenty of hope. “Nearly every recent Czech election” has seen a new party surge into parliament, he notes. In 2017 it was the Pirates, the liberal party that now entertains realistic hope that it could lead the next government. Four years earlier it was ANO itself.
However, Jiri Pehe, a political scientist and director of the New York University in Prague, is dubious. He suggests that despite wielding some “political skill”, Minar has struggled with the transition from civic leader to politician.
“The cooperation of the opposition may be Minar’s biggest legacy,” Pehe suggests. “It was a major objective of his Milion chvilek protest movement to get the opposition parties to behave in exactly the way they now are.”
Tipping the scales
The 500,000-signature threshold is key to LidePRO entering the October election because it would translate into around 10% of the vote. That, the movement believes, should allow it to boost the wider opposition vote to the point at which a coalition government can be formed.
The crucial point, says Ondracka, is to record a significant loss for ANO. But many worry that President Zeman could try to turn a tight result to his advantage.
The populist president has regularly tested the boundaries of his largely ceremonial post. In particular, he has wielded his power to appoint governments to win influence over policy, often to try to turn it eastwards to cement links with Moscow and Beijing.
Speculation is rife in Prague that barring a substantial opposition victory, Zeman could try to install his own technocratic cabinet, as he did in 2013. Some claim that the president has even suggested to Babis that the prime minister could lead such a government even if ANO suffers a poor election result.
“It’s naïve to think that Zeman will allow a change of guard,” says Ondracka. “There’s so much going on that he wants to control: the upcoming tender on the nuclear expansion, Russian and Chinese business and political deals.”
LidePRO worries that, at best, the opposition coalitions will simply redistribute current support among the parties, and therefore won’t be able to deliver the size of victory needed to prevent Zeman from dismissing any post-election claim they might have to form a new government.
Although wary of speculating, Olga Richterova, deputy chair of the Pirate Party, admits that “the president is not a predictable person”.
LidePRO says that its effort to bring half a million voters back to the ballot box could tip the scales. However, others worry that the new party could split the centrist and liberal vote.
The Pirates would be most vulnerable in that case. However, Richterova insists the party is unconcerned. “It’s a big task to build up a national party,” she says. “We wish good luck to all that feel the urge to change the public sphere.”
