Political analyst: Social Democrats should be more vocal in pointing out potential risks for democracy

The weekend conference of the Social Democratic Party bolstered the position of party leader Bohuslav Sobotka, approved new party statues and sharpened hostilities between the two strongest parties in government –the Social Democrats and Andrej Babiš’ ANO party. I asked commentator Jiří Pehe what he considered the most important message of the two day meeting.

Bohuslav Sobotka, photo: CTK

“Well, I think the main message is that the Social Democratic Party is a traditional party where we can see traditional political mechanisms at work and this is, in some ways, in sharp contrast to what we saw at the recent conference of ANO which was more like the gathering of a movement without firm political structures.”

The leaders of the two strongest parties in government pulled out the heavy caliber in the past fortnight – ANO accused the Social Democrats of squandering public funds and the Social Democrats suggested ANO was a potential threat to democracy – was this just the usual muscle-flexing at party conferences or has something significant changed in the coal government?

“Well, I think that it was both the muscle-flexing which we see at party congresses and also preparations for next year’s regional elections which of course will test both parties before the 2017 general elections. It seems that both the Social Democrats and ANO are now very dominant on the Czech political scene and they consider themselves to be the main rivals on it rather than the to-a-large-degree discredited right-wing opposition which does not seem to be able to recover from the electoral defeat two years ago.”

Practically all parties now see ANO as a potential threat to democracy –all point to the fact that Mr. Babiš has concentrated enormous economic, political and media power in his hands. Do you think democracy is at risk in the Czech Republic?

Andrej Babiš, photo: Filip Jandourek

“I personally think that democracy in this country is not under threat, but it is definitely not doing extremely well at this point simply because the concentration of economic, political and media power in the hands of one person – Mr. Babiš –is enormous and quite clearly his political movement is not an entirely democratic political formation simply because it is firmly controlled by him. And if the Social Democrats really want to succeed in defeating Mr. Babiš they will need to be much more vocal and persuasive in criticizing what they see as a possible conflict of interests. Mr. Sobotka with a strong mandate from his own party should in my opinion now become much more vocal in criticizing what really represents a potential risk for the country’s democracy.”