Voters in the October 2017 elections brought about a fundamental transformation of the parliamentary benches. The ČSSD, previously the strongest ruling party, suddenly became a marginal party. Babiš’s ANO, on the other hand, rocketed to its best election results to date. On the basis of the cards thus dealt, Andrej Babiš was entrusted with forming a government and subsequently became prime minister. The phase of cleansing the entire state apparatus of people of incompatible views began. Despite the fact that the appointed first one-colour government of Andrej Babiš did not have any support from other parliamentary clubs, a purge began that our country has not seen since the spring of 1948. Perhaps with the exception of Robert Pelikán, people with only one qualification got into government seats under ANO. That was mindless and endless loyalty to the boss. In addition to Alena Schillerová, who has been mentioned more than once, Klára Dostálová, Minister for Regional Development, was the most loyal figure in the ranking. Turning to this lady, we must remember, for example, her proposal for an amendment to the civil servants’ service law. Until then, the only people who could not be removed from the civil service by the so-called systemisation were the state secretaries in the individual ministries. This is exactly what Klára Dostálová’s legislative aid was supposed to “solve”. The individuals thus disposed of in the ministries they managed did not suffer from officials who were intellectually, professionally and organisationally superior to them. If a dull-witted minister brings in a similarly limited deputy, and he feels that the director of a department or head of a department is superior to him, he will soon find a way to get rid of him so that the difference in abilities is not so visible, and replace the expert with a similar or even worse dull-witted person than himself. For this reason, a purge has begun at all levels.
After the state administration came the armed forces, intelligence services and cultural institutions. Incidentally, the Constitutional Court’s decision that the government cannot make irreversible decisions without trust dates back to the time of Topolánek’s first one-colour government. The whole purge from the time of a government that did not even have confidence can be seen as completely constitutionally non-conformist. But that was precisely the point of making irreversible decisions during the six months of Babiš’s one-colour government.
In theory, state capture is referred to in similar situations. This is a situation of systemic corruption in which the private interests of an individual or a defined group of individuals significantly influence the decision-making processes of the state for their own benefit. If we would like to see another and even clearer manifestation of this state of affairs, we need only look at Slovakia after the victory of Robert Fico in the 2023 elections or read the following chapter, where we describe this unfortunate epoch in Slovakia.
When we talk about cleaning up the state, we can again look at it as an equation or a task of who got what. Of course, the winners are Babiš and Zeman, who could better promote their interests, and consequently the interests of those to whom they owe something, such as Russia and China, through fools. On the other side are seemingly only those sacked police officers, civil servants or disloyal NGOs that have lost funding, or political parties that have lost influence in media councils, boards of state-owned companies or other control mechanisms. But the worst thing is not really talked about. It costs us all more than anything else to have the state controlled by thugs and the incompetent individuals they control. If someone comes into some cash in an individual piggish public contract, a lease that is unfavourable to the state, or a clientelism-ridden administrative decision, we can liken it to a minor injury to the state and society. But if the state gets rid of the best experts and they go into the private sector and help those who are suing the state, and if these experts are replaced by people without the necessary historical memory and context, it will weaken the immunity of the body. The body (the state) is then susceptible to all kinds of diseases. And that disease has come, not figuratively, but actually. In the coronavirus crisis, the consequences of Babiš’s initial purge became apparent to the letter. The complete impotence of the state apparatus to manage the crisis, the issuing of countless decisions that were overturned by courts at all levels as if on a treadmill, and thousands of deaths due to incompetence alone – these are the results of state capture by one gangster.
After the state of cleansing the state of all enemies, real and present only in Babiš’s paranoid mind, was achieved, a more stable way of governing could begin. In this situation, Miloš Zeman came into play with other oligarchs and hostile powers at his back. After months when the Prague Castle had the text of the constitution on the rules about forming a government perhaps only for playing with or wiping in the toilet, a coalition cooperation between the ANO movement, the ČSSD and the KSČM was concluded. The Communists were then to be a mere parliamentary crony, i.e. a subject without an active role in the two-colour government. For Zeman, however, they represented, like some of the Social Democrats directly in the government, another lever of power.
