Populist leader announces plans to create Czech version of Germany’s AfD

The movement Bloc Against Islam, which had hopes of running on a joint-platform with the Dawn party in regional and Senate elections this autumn, is to be transformed into a regular party modeled along Germany’s AfD. Its leader Martin Konvička said the new political entity would seek to establish close contacts with AfD in order to bolster its position on the scene in preparation for the 2017 parliamentary elections. I asked political analyst Jiří Pehe how he views the party’s chances.

Martin Konvička, photo: CTK

“I think that Mr. Konvička is simply trying to model his project on something that has been successful in Germany. Clearly AfD has succeeded in several lander and that is something that must be an inspiration to people like Mr. Konvička, but he is trying to create a Czech equivalent of AfD from a strongly Islamophobic movement which was not known for having any other program. It would be like creating AfD from Pegida, that is the basic difference, because AfD is a much more structured and liberal and in some ways serious project than Pegida. That is the main challenge for Mr. Konvička which he does not seem to realize.”

Maybe he is hoping that voters will not look deeper into the differences and that support from people like the former Czech president Vaclav Klaus for the German AfD may help legitimize this party as well...

“Clearly this is what Mr. Konvička is banking on, but I think that Czechs are not politically stupid, Czechs on average have good political instincts and they are able to see through projects such as Mr. Konvička’s attempt to create a Czech version of AfD. It is certain he will have some followers, it is quite possible that he will attract enough people to get into Parliament but I simply cannot see him and people around him as being attractive enough for Czech voters to want them in government or as a sizeable parliamentary party.”

So the majority of Czechs are anti-migrant and increasingly Eurosceptic, but not to such an extent to give space to extremist parties, not while the policy of the government is what it is now?

Anti-Islam demonstration, Prague, May 1 2016, photo: CTK

“Absolutely. I think that most Czechs are clearly afraid of migration and they do not have very positive views of the European Union right now, but at the same time I think that politically they are taken care of by the Czech mainstream parties which are much more Eurosceptic and much more anti-immigration than the German parties.”

“That one problem for Mr. Konvička; the other is that the Czech Republic is the only country in the post-communist block that still has a very strong Communist Party that basically plays the role of a protest party, so anyone who wants to protest against foreigners, migration, EU, or Germans has the Communists to vote for and can be certain that their vote will not be lost because that party will always be in Parliament –at least in the foreseeable future. I think that to some extent the Communist Party plays a sanitary role in the Czech political system, because it attracts a lot of votes that would otherwise go to extreme right-wing parties and this is one of the reasons why the Czech Republic does not have a party such as Jobbic in Hungary or the People’s Party of Mr. Kotleba in Slovakia.”