Search Begins for Successor to Charismatic Havel

On Wednesday (Jan. 15) the Czech parliament will elect a new president. Václav Havel's second term ends in February, and the famous writer and playwright won't be running for a third tenure as Czech president. Even now, just before the election, he has no clear-cut successor. And few in Prague expect the first round of voting to be decisive.

"It is hard to find an appropriate candidate for this position because here this position has a 'monarchical character,'" Czech political scientist Bohumil Doležal explained to DW-RADIO. "The perception developed that the president wasn't an ordinary politician, but rather always an extraordinary personality."

A similar comet-like ascendency from political dissident and writer to celebrated head of state is unthinkable under the current democratic circumstances.

Besides that, Doležal points out, a 'PR president' like Havel isn't necessary: "I don't think that it's the most important thing for a small country. Admittedly, it is a sort of reference point, a sort of advertisement for the country," he adds.

Unrelenting criticism

Among the Czech political elite and the population, quiet criticism of Havel has grown steadily in recent years. After all it's difficult to like someone who is so different from oneself.

While the majority of Czechs came to terms with the Communist leaders in the 1970s and 1980s, Havel was one of the few who openly opposed the regime. The state apparatus payed him back for it. The civil and human rights activist from Prague was subjected to constant repression and spent years in prison.

Today Czechs openly criticize the politician. "His politics were somewhat ambivalent," Doležal says. "He should have been above party politics. However, in the last ten years he polarized political debates. On the one side stood Havel with his people and on the other stood the former prime minister Václav Klaus."

Getting back

And now Klaus (photo) wants to get back at his rival. Klaus is the oppositional party ODS's candidate for president. Recent polls indicate that the popular Thatcherist und euro-sceptic would win the election if the president was directly elected.

"Klaus owes his popularity to the fact that he invented the 'capitalization of socialism.' It was the concept of a rapid change: a quite simple theory, which was ominous for that reason. Many were impressed by it though."

Among the members of parliament who will decide the election Klaus has so many opponents – even among his own ranks – that a victory after the first round of voting is unlikely.

No obvious successor

But none of the other candidates has a good chance to poll the necessary majority in the first round either. "At the moment, it doesn't look like any candidate will receive the necessary votes to become president," Doležal maintains.

That's partly due to the election law, but also to the four political parties, including both parties that make up the governing coalition, that each sent their own candidates into the race. Besides Klaus, two other politicians have good prospects.

Former Minister of Justice Jaroslav Bureš, put forth by the governing Social Democratic Party, in not among the favorites. The official, who is largely unknown among Czechs, was pitched as a solution to fights within the party's parliamentary group. Like Klaus, Bureš cannot even count on the votes from his own party colleagues.

Waiting in the wings

That's because a further candidate is waiting in the wings of the strongest governing party: Miloš Zeman (photo). Until June 2002 Zeman was the Czech Republic's controversial prime minister. He gained notoriety beyond his country's borders for damaging relations with Germany by describing the Sudenten Germans, who lived in Czechoslovakia before being expelled and persecuted in the aftermath of World War II, as extremists.

Czech commentators predict that Zeman will step into the ring for the second round of voting to rescue the presidency.

Prime Minister Vladimír Špidla would rather see his party comrade Zeman retire. According to Czech newspaper reports, Špidla has called for parliament to elect a compromise.

That would be Petř Pithart (photo), Senate president and the governing Christian Democratic Party's candidate. The erstwhile reformist communist and dissident – a politician since the 1989 revolution – is considered a man of equilibrium who would never pursue his own political aims, as opposed to Klaus and Zeman.

Whether Pithart, Zeman or Klaus, the "monarchical character" of the presidency is history. Political scientist Doležal and many of his countrymen and women can expect one wish to be granted: "I would be pleased if the character of the administration would change. If the president would be viewed as a constitutional factor, as the highest official in the state, not as a leader, not as a prophet or saint. We won't be a prodigy state anymore with an extraordinary personality at the top. This impression was wrong anyway."