Eggs-treme protests disrupt Social Democrats’ election campaign

In the run up to the European elections next month, column inch after column inch has been dedicated to a rather unlikely piece of news from the campaign trail; at a string of recent appearances in the Czech provinces, head of the Social Democrats Jiří Paroubek has been repeatedly pelted with eggs by onlookers. The development has been received with consternation by the Social Democrats, though political analysts suggest that this could actually help boost the party’s share of the vote.

Jiří Paroubek

When the head of the Social Democrats, Jiří Paroubek, was pelted with eggs at a political rally in Kolín two weeks ago, the reaction in the press was one of amusement and shock. But then it happened again in Plzeň, and again in Kladno, and again in Příbram and Beroun. Mr Paroubek has quipped that the perpetrators would be better off baking a cake than haranguing him on the campaign trail, but the Czech daily Právo reported on Saturday that the mood behind the scenes in the Social Democrat camp was one of agitation in light of these developments.

Jiří Pehe is a political analyst, I asked him why he thought Mr Paroubek was falling victim to such attacks:

“He is personally quite disliked by a number of people. He is a very controversial politician, even though he belongs to the most popular group of politicians in the country, he is equally, let’s say, hated by a very large group of people who dislike his political behaviour.

“That’s one reason, the other reason is that, I think, it may be politically motivated. That means that it is a new strategy, never used in Czech politics before. And so it is possible that this has been, as Mr Paroubek alleges, organized by his political opponents.”

Mr Paroubek’s political opponents – the Civic Democrats – have distanced themselves from the campaign, encouraging people to voice their protest at the ballot box rather than through the act of throwing an egg.

Mr Pehe suggests that while the Civic Democrats’ campaign team may not be behind the egg-throwing, young Civic Democrat voters quite possibly are. But, according to Mr Pehe, the egg with which Mr Paroubek is currently being pelted is not likely to stick:

“This campaign in the end may help Mr Paroubek, because it draws attention not only to those who throw eggs at him, and as I said, there are various suspicions as to who may have a hand in this, but it also draws attention to his own campaign. I think that a lot of people do not like the fact that he is being exposed to this kind of behaviour, so it may in the end benefit him - especially if he treats this campaign with humour, which he seems to be doing now. As far as I know, his supporters are right now handing out chocolate eggs to people. In this case, he may actually benefit from it.”

The extent to which all publicity really is good publicity will be seen when voters go to the polls for the European elections on June 5-6.