Jan
Beránek
> Strana zelených
Voting unanimously YES for unilateral “blue” ODS
right-wing government, today’s Czech Green Party trespassed the threshold of
my silent tolerance to its development in the last year.
What exactly does this mean that all green MPs voted
for parliamentary resolution to literally „express trust for ODS cabinet“?
We must first of examine concrete substance of such a decision. That is because
in green politics, as I understand it, content and program must be given higher
priority than ad-hoc political tactics.
Czech Green Party voted unanimously to express trust to
Martin Riman as a minister of industry. Riman is chronically known as ruthless
fighter for construction of new highways, nuclear power plants and had been
systematically opposing environmental legislation and regulation of the biggest
polluters in our country.
Czech Green Party voted unanimously to express trust to
Ivan Langer as a minister of interior. Since he started to act as a minister one
month ago, Langer ignored his limited mandate and organized far-reaching purges
inside state police, criminal investigation and security services, throwing out
their their top structures without adequate explanation. Being a member of
parliament for years, Langer has long record of brutal attempts to destroy
public service TV (he was one of key players of coup in Czech TV that resulted
in mass public protests in 2001), and to force a vassal position to institutions
supposedly independent of politicians, including state security services.
Czech Green Party voted unanimously to express trust to
Alexandr Vondra as minister of foreign affairs. Vondra has been pushing hard to
build US star-wars’s missile base in Czech Republic and to align Czech foreign
policy with that of United States, thus weakening our chances to develop common
and sovereign international policy inside EU.
Czech Green Party voted unanimously to express trust to
Vlastimil Tlustý as minister of finance. Tlustý recently published, and pair
by state money, commercial advertising in newspapers containing false
allegations of previous government regarding state budget. Consequently, he
threw out an experienced and loyal-to-state high positioned officer from his
ministry, who was pointing out these mistakes. Tlusty, being a member of
parliament and chair of its finance committee, was concerting members of his
committee during deals approving hundreds of millions of extra budget lines for
clientelistic projects.
Czech Green Party voted unanimously to express trust to
unilateral government of ODS – a party whose honorable chair says that climate
change is a fiction developed by extremists, who says that European union and
civic society are the biggest threat to democracy, who says that fairness and
willingness to voluntary follow the rules are weakness and incompetence.
Czech Green Party voted unanimously to express trust to
government of ODS who proclaims Euro skepticism, promotes unconditional
liberalization of world trade and radical reduction of social state. Czech Green
Party gave its votes to the only party in the Czech Republic that had been
systematically making attempts to introduce a majority election system, wiping
out smaller political subjects. Greens voted for a party that, both by its words
and acts, promotes an ideology directly opposite to socially and environmentally
sensitive, open politics.
Inside no other established Czech political party we
can find more examples of linking leading politicians with large business at
communal, regional and state levels, than in ODS. Corruption and reciprocally
distributed personal benefits can be, no doubt, found also within other parties,
Czech Greens unfortunately being no exception. But ODS is different. ODS adopted
these mechanisms as a key organizational principle. And while intrigues of
social democrats are mostly amateurish and aesthetically disgusting, ODS is
doing the same with cold, well-developed professionalism and backed up by its
unscrupulous ideology.
Recent leaders of Czech Green Party will never be able
to explain credibly why it ostentationly declared to be strictly neutral on the
left-right political scale during election campaign, but already one hour after
elections publicly said that it would not answer phone calls from social
democrats. Since then, representatives of Czech Green Party are doing all they
can to convince everybody that they are the most solid segment of so called
“right wing half” of Czech Parliament. At the same time when six Green MPs
took “funny” T-shirts with slogans “I am not a vote of Paroubek” (i.e.
Social Democrats), Martin Bursik was using each opportunity to stress that their
votes for Topolánek (i.e. ODS) are guaranteed. The results of voting on trust
or distrust to the “blue” ODS government (which was by the way obviously
lost before it stared) only proven this in reality at the end.
Already the content of so called “three party
coalition agreement”, signed by Martin Bursik in early July, fundamentally
diverged Czech Greens from their political program. The Czech Blue/Green Party -
signing upon a coalition agreement that was “promoting accelerated
construction of highways”, “active liberalization of world trage”,
accepting operation of Temelin nuclear reactors, adopting the principle of flax
taxation and canceling the status of non-profit hospitals – is, in the global
world of green political structures, as scarce rarity as is Blue Mauritius.
How comes that a party born from the roots of
solidarity, sensitivity and fundamental opposition to the destruction of our
world by arrogant powerful, is ruining these principles already in the first
months of its presence in Czech Parliament? The arguments, used by Czech Greens
to defend these steps, are only exposing absurdity of its pirouette: it keeps
saying that its behavior is needed to keep party’s credibility in the eyes of
voters and political partners.
I think that the core reason for Czech Green Party
turning blue is the currently overriding internal culture of attempts to get to
the power at any price. Sold-out of green agenda had begun already at the moment
when key sponsor of its election campaign, Jaroslav Soukup from Medea
advertising company, was nominated as the leading negotiator for economics
during talks about the coalition treaty. Buying up political influence of rich
businessmen must be out ruled from any real green politics!
While the success of Czech Green Party in parliamentary
elections is respectable and needed, it is not the above-all highest value.
Unfortunately, this year’s success seems to be paid for by annihilation of the
content of green politics.
Despite this, I keep my hope that this is only a
temporary deviation and that – like in all diverse natural ecosystems – the
Green Party will restore its feedback and self-repair mechanisms. I wish that
this text helps it to find its lost orientation.
Jan Beránek
in Chytálky, 12th October, 2006