Pohořelice is a town of 5,000 in southern Moravia. Supermarket, shops, library, schools, health center, restaurants and pubs. Standard civic amenities, if you can’t find something here, is in Brno in 15 minutes. We will also find a police district department here. It was here that Robert Šlachta began in 1990 as an ordinary police officer, to gradually work his way up to the head of the Organized Crime Unit and the one who stepped on the prime minister himself.
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No wonder, then, that people take the Nobility for granted here. His banners hang from balconies, on fences, leaflets promising to investigate suspicious coronavirus orders, are stuck in shop windows, which must have been closed for several months, and their owners are still counting the damage. The frustration of the locals that some mice were supposed to be in an emergency while they were digging in the ground is considerable, multiplied by the fact that we are far from the “nobility”. It is closer to Vienna on a non-existent motorway than on the D1 to Prague.
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Robert Šlachta started, not by chance, the election campaign right here. It was at the end of January, in the biggest covid misery. Hospitals collapsed, over 100 people died daily, and the Czechia reported over a million infections. In all this, the nobility began to collect signatures for the emergence of his movement Oath. The author of this text, out of curiosity, attended the first “drive-in” meeting in nearby Pasohlávky.
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At that time, a stage with a large-format screen was erected in the open, to which several dozen cars drove down. Instead of applause, the participants honked, flashed their lights. While the leaders of the opposition parties, Bartoš and Fiala, sat in the parliamentary offices and issued one sharp Facebook status after another, an impressive distance rally was held just outside Brno, as in the style of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. The nobility tried to give the local people the feeling that he would fight for them while the others coughed at them. And this feeling is gradually spreading across the country.
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At first, the nobility’s announcement that he was entering politics with some ex-colleagues met with amused reactions. “Police Junta”, “Civic Movement of Colonels”. Commentator Martin Fendrych believed that “the expolicist and excelle of the nobility has a chance, but at the level of a miracle, quite slim.”
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Last weekend, the Šlacht movement with a rather slim chance gained 5% in surveys for the first time. However, commentator Petr Honzejk believes that Šlachta may end up as Pensioners for Life Insurance, to whom the 1998 survey also attributed over 5% to eventually receive 3%.
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Of course, the Nobility and His Oath can burn like a Kremlík beetle chewing gum, but reaching the magical electoral limit in polls can also mean that hesitant voters will not be afraid of a cast. As was the case in 2006 with the Green Party.
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There are several reasons why Šlacht is doing well – he has a contact campaign and honestly depicts cities and towns. He has a life story that impresses many people – a cop who is not afraid of the powerful. And the city’s right-wingers, who was overthrown by the government in 2013, cannot come up with his name – another point for him.
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However, the main reason is simple. While the coalition of Pirates and STAN and Together offer the people change, Andrej Babiš Andrej Babiš, Tomio Okamura endless and exhausting fight against all, Robert Šlachta started offering voters a scarce commodity in the Czech Republic – hope. Respectively, her illusion. However, even in the covid-shattered Czech Republic, it is slowly counting more than the promise of change, which can be for the better or for the worse.
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An illusion of hopethat “someone new will come who won’t hang out.” An illusion of hopethat the uncompromising bastard rakes into it. An illusion of hopethat everything will finally be investigated and everyone will be measured by the same meter. On television, we can watch how dermatologist Petr Arenberger came and went with impunity, cheating on everything – from the privatization of an apartment to property declarations to renting his own building to the hospital he heads. While an ordinary entrepreneur is “kneeled” by a financier with a security order for a poorly filled-in box. Many voters think: Nobody does anything about it, maybe an expold could.
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Not to mention Šlacht’s main electoral pull – that billions have been spent on suspicious coronavirus contracts with insufficient medical material, the media has been reporting for a year. A topic on which even a top doctor will find the agreement of technicians from the assembly plant, because they both received the same low-quality and overpriced respirator from a company from the Cayman Islands.
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Instead of taking advantage of this easily explanable and clear narrative of the opposition party, as four years ago Babiš mined lithium, the last two months filled the media space with a vote in the House, which they needed communists who – wonder of the world. What was that for? Will the opposition put it on billboards? “We tried to express distrust of the government, it didn’t work out, but we wanted the principle! Choose us! ”The nobleman will hang his banner next to them.“ We will check the orders from an emergency situation! ”It is not difficult to guess what is more understandable for an ordinary person.
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It can be seen that the nobles are campaigning by professionals. He claims that he does not have and does not need a PR agency, people are said to advise him themselves. They said they played him. Precisely because of the considerable non-transparency of this police movement, we can encounter many theories on social networks as to who is actually behind the Oath.
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According to some, it is Andrej Babiš’s B-team that is supposed to help him keep his votes in “his camp”, similar to what Miroslav Kalousek did with TOP 09 to save right-wing votes for Mirek Topolánek. According to others, this is another project of the people behind the SPD, who understood that the histrionic and aggressive style of Okamura and his supporters will be a few voices, but they will always be on the periphery of interest as an association of friends of microwave opponents. The nobility, on the other hand, seems more moderate, more pro-Western, and it works for him. He luxuriates both among the disappointed YES voters and among the former SPD voters, who already have endless cultural wars up to their necks.
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At the same time, for example, the Oath is not so different from PirSTAN in its attitude to migration: “Illegal migration is a problem. Some downplay it, others the other way around. However, we cannot close our eyes to her. (…) People are running to us for a better life. (…) We refuse to allow another group of people to benefit from the misfortunes of individuals. Smuggling must be fought hard. Many Czechs also emigrated and found their place elsewhere in the world. People deserve help, and we Europeans cannot close the door on them. But it’s not free. If someone wants to live here, they cannot just take, they must also participate in the running of the state. ”It should be noted that the guarantor of the security-defense part of the Oaths program is former presidential candidate Jiří Hynek, who wanted to ban political Islam by the constitution and would not oppose a referendum from the EU.
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When we realize the spectrum of brown color that Andrej Babiš began to move with in recent days about foreigners and flats shared with migrants, Šlachta still acts as a centrist with his pleasing proclamations. He doesn’t say anything like that, just barren statements that are hard to defend against. In short, like Andrej Babiš, when eight years ago he brought people his story about a successful businessman who just wants to help his country.
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Of course, Robert Šlachta is riding a similar messianic wave, which always turns out badly – and in the Czech Republic in particular, it is enough to remember Tomia Okamura or earlier in Věci veřejné. The mere fact that most people, apart from the Nobility, can hardly remember any other significant personality of the movement, smells of trouble.
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This does not necessarily mean that, in the event of electoral success, strange types, such as the Free or Rozner deputies, will enter the House, but given the non-existent internal party structure, people should be even more attentive to who appears there. It doesn’t have to be big names, it can only be local codes, but as we see in Jaroslav Faltýnek, the parliamentary card begins to open the door to the big world.
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It is claimed that it was the ODS government that created Andrej Babiš. However, two are always needed for this. In 2013, it was also the inability of the then still strong opposition CSSD to offer an alternative to the middle class affected by the financial crisis, which only contributed to a narrow election win over the YES movement a few months old. This year the situation is a bit repetitive. Babiš began to lose, though not enough after the terrible covid embarrassment of his government.
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However, the opposition parties have again failed to capture the spirit of the times and recognize the direction that many people want to take. At the same time, it is often not so different from the liberal-centrist or right-conservative values upheld by both coalitions. All people have a desire for a better life, only some want to achieve this by making a hard deal with the past.
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Before we get angry here, let’s remember the Pirates prison bus in 2017, which promised punishments for the Stork’s Nest or the privatization of OKD. It would therefore be hypocritical to hear ridicule or insults against Šlacht’s election campaign from this camp. And let’s not be surprised if, in the autumn, the nobility will be on the scales in terms of the future direction of the country. However, it is also the turn of journalists. They should carefully reveal who is behind it, paying attention to the people around them, especially at regional level – so that the rest of us know what to expect.
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