Communists in Politics
Interesting question is what happened to these two million communist
after revolution in 1989. Well, actually nothing. The Czech communist
party was able to operate despite of its human rights violations.
The new communist party claims that they are not the descendants
of the old party but actually some of them are. Old communists
and some new ones operate now in democratic communist party, but
how democratic can communist party be because of its ideology?
Of course not all of them stayed in communist party but changed
the party when it was finally possible. So the situation is that
the same people that were in power during communist Czechoslovakia
are in power today as well.
Because of its past the communist party has negative reputation
in Czech. Even though the party has had a steady support in elections
as about 10 to 15 per sent of Czechs votes them. But their supporters
are more active in voting so in last elections their support was
surprisingly high – 18 per sent. Because of their negative
reputation there has never been after 1989 a communist minister.
Well, who would like to make friends from communists in a post-communist
country? In a latest governmental crisis the prime minister had
to promise that he would not co-operate with communists. Any party
who would co-operate with communist party would make a political
suicide.
So the position of the communist party is very strange in a parliamentary
way. They have relatively high support but they are not taken
seriously. This reflects the fact that the communist party had
strong structures and high experience, which transferred to our
times as other parties still are just learning the new ways of
democracy. To many Czechs parliamentary is just a joke. This you
can tell from the large amount of small humoristic parties like
Friends of Beer party or Sexual Pleasure party.
Post-communism in Czech is not limited on to politics. The legacy
of communism can also be seen for example in bureaucracy and university
teachers and living buildings (panelaks) and in a service industry
workers readiness to smile, so actually in all every day life.
East Germany had the advantage of experienced West Germany that
filled the vacuum. Some believe that it will take 10 to 15 years
before Czech is able to fulfil western standards as a democratic
state. I personally think it will take at least one generation
and even after that we have no guarantees of what kind of legacy
communism have left to values and manners. The political culture
of Czech is nowadays very twisted. Lies, false arguments and mocking
are commonly used as a part of normal political communication
and arguments of politicians are very populist.
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