By 2013 we could continue the narrative quite smoothly, the individual manifestations of the cancer called “corruption” were continuously evolving. However, with the enactment of the direct election of the president in early 2013, there were suddenly two centres of power – the government and the political parties participating in the government, and the president and his minions. For this reason, we must also divide our narrative. While this chapter will focus more on the Miloš Zeman factor and his cronies with all the side effects, Chapter 7 will focus more on the style of government of one oligarch. Understandably, both chapters must reflect the interaction between the two centres of power.
Direct election of the President
Since the adoption of the constitution before the establishment of the independent Czech Republic, a total of four elections of the head of our state have been held, so to speak, the old-fashioned way. According to the original constitutional concept, the President was elected by indirect suffrage. The ruler of Prague Castle was elected by both chambers of the legislature. Both Václav Havel, in the case of the second election, and Václav Klaus, therefore, were elected at a special meeting of both chambers and by a greater or lesser number of votes of the legislators. However, this situation has changed some twenty years after the system was set up.
The change from an indirect to a direct voting system was discussed after each of these elections. However, it was only after the last and probably the most savage parliamentary election that preparations for changing the constitution took a concrete direction. After a fairly broad discussion, a concept was chosen on the basis of social and political consensus, which did not change the powers of the head of state and only changed the method of election. The Constitutional Law on the change to direct election was adopted by the Chamber of Deputies at the end of 2011 by an overwhelming majority. The Senate passed it a few weeks later by a much less convincing margin. In any case, elections for the fifth presidential term in early 2013 were held directly on the basis of Constitutional Act No. 71/2012.
While no powers were added to the president thus elected, as would make sense, his legitimacy – at least according to the interpretation of the first president so elected – increased significantly. Put popularly, the president thus elected did not base his authority on 281 legislators or a majority of them, but on millions of voters. In the context of this arrangement of the highest constitutional offices, we speak of a kind of quasi-presidential model. What this meant in practice we will see in a few concrete examples.
Rusnok’s government installed by Zeman
After Robert Šlachta’s raid on the government office and the subsequent resignation of the government of Petr Nečas, we were able to experience for the first time what Zeman’s creative concept of the constitution means. At that time, the parties of the existing coalition submitted a statement to Miloš Zeman to the effect that they had enough mandates to continue the Nečas government without Petr Nečas. Miroslava Němcová would be the Prime Minister in such a case. However, President Zeman was relatively quick to appoint Jiří Rusnok as the new Prime Minister. Subsequently, without any relevant support in the Chamber of Deputies, he appointed Rusnok’s government in July 2013. It was, surprisingly, full of various elements loyal to Zeman. In many cases, we can safely say that they were Zeman’s creatures. Some of the ministers, such as Agriculture Minister Toman or Justice Minister Benešová, played an interesting pro-Zeman role later on. In any case, a fortnight after its appointment, this government did not gain the expected support in the Chamber of Deputies. Nevertheless, it ruled for another six months.
Pro-Chinese and pro-Russian patheticness towards Michal Koudelka
One of the institutions that Zeman’s pro-Russian and pro-Chinese structures failed to eliminate or significantly weaken was the counter-intelligence agency, the Security Information Service (BIS). And it was a rather painful shortcoming for Zeman’s clique. For the BIS – at first in general, as the years went by
much more detailed and specific – it described the malicious activities of both superpowers, i.e. Russia and China, in our country.
However, this was not just idle chatter on the part of the BIS, but concrete successes in the fight against organised crime were also visible. Crime that the Russian embassy here supports.
In 2019, for example, the BIS, in conjunction with the National Headquarters against Organised Crime, succeeded in dismantling a dangerous rogue structure. This criminal network in the Czech Republic was built by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). According to the head of the BIS himself, Michal Koudelka, it was created by people with links to the Russian intelligence services and was financed by Russia and the Russian embassy.
The usual response to these deadly warning signs and specific actions of the BIS has been the embarrassingly condescending and mocking words of Miloš Zeman. On some of the counter-intelligence warnings, for example, Zeman was heard to say that they were “bullshit” or that intelligence officers were “snoopers,” etc.
In the wake of one of the particularly harsh BIS reports on the growth of dangerous great power influence in the Czech Republic, Zeman’s logical statement was that the BIS should deal with economic crime and corruption in the Czech Republic and not deal with what Russia is doing here.
At the time we write about in this chapter, the BIS was headed by Director Michal Koudelka, a counterintelligence expert recognized by Western countries. Miloš Zeman has repeatedly refused to appoint him as a general, although Andrej Babiš, who otherwise feared inconsistency with the president like the devil. But at the time he was even more afraid of Koudelka’s institution, or rather of the information about him that was being administered by it. The embarrassment of not appointing Koudelka as a general caused embarrassment in contact with Koudelka’s foreign colleagues, since foreign intelligence chiefs are supported by their governments and appointed to that rank. Koudelka received a prestigious award for his work at the time of Zeman’s dehumanizing drivel from the director of the U.S. CIA. After seven rejections from Zeman, Michal Koudelka did not receive his appointment as a brigadier general until May 2023 from the new president, Peter Paul.
Unconstitutional and uncultured whims on culture
Another example of President Zeman proving that he will not bother with a constitution is a situation from the summer of 2019, when Social Democratic Culture Minister Antonín Staněk resigned through Prime Minister Babiš. However, Zeman did not accept it. At the request of Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) President Hamáček, Prime Minister Babiš proposed Stanek’s dismissal. At the same time, it was proposed to the head of state to appoint Michal Šmarda as Culture Minister. However, the fickle old man Zeman did not like him. The president dismissed Staňek some eight weeks later. But alas, he did not appoint Šmarda as minister on the prime minister’s proposal, as the constitution commands him to do. So the ministry was temporarily run by economic deputy René Schreier. Zeman has made it known that he will let it go through his head during his vacation and will make his will known in a week or so. This did indeed happen and in mid-August he decided not to appoint Šmarda and Babiš, or rather the ČSSD, should come up with someone else and he would graciously consider whether to decide otherwise. According to Zeman, Šmarda was not competent enough. If the reader recalls the competence of a number of ministers in his own government or in the above-mentioned pseudo-official government from the summer of 2013, it is clear that there really could not have been a problem in terms of expertise. Zeman was simply showing that he was above Babiš and that he could do whatever he wanted as a result of Babiš’s endless list of criminal suspicions.
At the end of July and the beginning of August, however, the upper chamber of the Parliament took a clear position. The Senate overwhelmingly approved a motion to sue the President for gross violations of the Constitution. One of the important points of the draft lawsuit, heading to the hands of MPs, was the violation of the constitution in the form of the failure to dismiss Minister Staňek and the failure to appoint Šmarda. Needless to say, the draft lawsuit did not move on from the lower house, controlled by Babiš, Hamáček, the Communists and the Okamura party.
For the sake of completeness, we should add that Zeman applied the same unconstitutional whim in the case of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka’s proposal to remove Andrej Babiš from the seat of Finance Minister in the spring of 2017 or in the case of the Chamber of Deputies’ proposal to appoint Simeona Zikmundová as Vice President of the Supreme Audit Office.
Pro-Russian chaos with professors
At the time of writing this publication, we are again a year older and we already know what history has brought since that period. But that is why we should analyse some of the events from the time of Zeman’s greatest glory to explain why he did this or that at that time.
However, we must – knowing the future developments after Putin’s full-scale attack on Ukraine – recognise what Europe’s greatest weapon is. It is national unity so that the West can take a clear position. This unity can only be achieved when states are led by competent and pro-democratic figures. This, in turn, can be achieved in a non-crisis economic situation and in a situation where all the mechanisms of the rule of law are working as the constitution and other regulations require them to. If we reverse the situation, Russian and other dictators will only thrive in a situation where Europe is mired in its own problems, dominated by chaos. One of the manifestations of the supposed chaos is the lack of trust of individual citizens in the leaders of the state, the institutions and the system as a whole. And it was precisely in breaking trust that then-President Zeman excelled. Either by his nominations, he disparaged a given institution, as happened, for example, with the office of the Public Defender of Human Rights. The nomination of Stanislav Křeček to the post, which is responsible for drawing attention to injustices, was, of course, a further division of society. Křeček did not disappoint the trust placed in his hands: his remarks about the Roma and other minorities buried the respectability of the institution he represented for years after his mandate ended.
Another pro-chaotic effort is to reduce the esteem of the academic title of professor. This has been awarded by the president since the time of the First Republic. Virtually immediately after his election as president, Zeman began to boycott the process. First he took aim at Martin C. Putna. The process of his appointment as a professor ended with him refusing to personally hand over the appointment and he began to degrade the appointment by saying that only the Minister of Education should do it.
Subsequently, he took the process of erosion of the rules enshrined in law to a new level when he chose Ivan Ošt’adal and Jiří Fajt. He also refused to sign the relevant decisions for them to become professors. Although Charles University has filed an administrative lawsuit claiming that the president is obliged to do so. However, Zeman was left unmoved by some decision of the judiciary and, decision-not-decision, did not sign the documents. One would expect a president in a rule of law to respect the traditions and decisions of the court first. But Zeman managed to kill three birds with one stone. First of all, he has stirred up controversy against his hated personalities with alternative views. Next, he lowered the esteem of the natural authorities of society, the scientific capacities, and did not appoint them personally as professors. And since the courts have ordered him to follow the law, he has simply shown everyone that respect for the law and the decisions of the courts can be overridden by the arrogance of whoever can currently afford it. The Kremlin could have washed its hands of Zeman’s actions, for if this were followed long enough in all or much of Europe, Western society would soon deny what it stands for and Russia would be able to peel off more of Eastern Europe with impunity.
