Who will Pres. Petr Pavel support?
Political commentators are still scratching their heads about what exactly Pres. Petr Pavel meant on Mon. when he said that those who “approach unpopular issues with courage and responsibility” can count on his support. His own highly outspoken economic adviser David Marek of Deloitte had said a few days earlier that he couldn’t recommend to the president that the 2025 budget proposal, which was submitted by Finance Min. Zbyněk Stanjura of ODS, be signed in its current form. Pavel’s speech also came shortly after STAN Chair Vít Rakušan told Respekt that his party wants an open discussion about the revenue side of the budget and that he will ask other politicians in the election debates next year whether education, street safety and the 2% Nato commitment can all be sufficiently financed under the current tax system. Remember too that it was Pres. Pavel who refused in late Sept. to act as the guardian of the coalition agreement, thereby contributing to the departure of the Pirates and to a surge in the poll ratings of STAN. These are all indications that the main politician who can count on Petr Pavel’s support is Vít Rakušan.

Síkela’s big community-energy lie

Jozef Síkela boasted in MFD a day after he left office that the industry ministry under his guidance made record progress in promoting the development of cheap renewable energy, contributing to an increase of more than 100,000 in the number of photovoltaic installations. The cornerstone of this, he said, is community-energy sharing, and it has already attracted around 10,000 applicants since Aug. Today, however, Hospodářské noviny put down in black and white what energy experts have known all along. As the number of people producing solar power and sending it through their building or the grid increases, the power companies that provide electricity when the sun doesn’t shine will start charging these community-energy users higher rates to compensate for the fluctuations. And of course the demands on the grid itself will rise, leading to extra investment requirements and distribution costs. In this sense, Síkela is leaving for Brussels at just the right time. A responsible ministry would at least leave behind in a drawer an honest estimate of just how much this “cheap renewable energy” is actually going to cost everyone.

Babiš kicks the Pirates while they’re down

If about 18,000 more people had voted in the parliamentary elections in Oct. 2021 for either Robert Šlachta’s Přísaha/Oath or Jan Hamáček’s ČSSD, the Czech PM today would no doubt be Andrej Babiš. Those two parties missed passing the 5% threshold by about 0.35% of the vote each. Babiš lost his position of power because of this, and he is apparently now trying to will the same fate on Petr Fiala, on whoever Fiala’s successor at the helm of ODS might be, or on Pres. Petr Pavel’s apparent favorite as the next PM, STAN Chair Vít Rakušan. Instead of concentrating his efforts on attacking ODS and STAN, Babiš is doubling down in his criticism of the Pirates. He could have taken their side against ODS in the building-permit and budget disputes but didn’t. If this strategy works so well that the Pirates drop out of Parliament next year and the current four-party coalition falls just short of the votes it needs, Babiš will have clear sailing into cabinet headquarters. But if the strategy fails and the Pirates shine before the elections as both the anti-Babiš and anti-Fiala opposition, Babiš could find himself one year from now in the same position all over again.

Little Pirates in a room of grown-ups
The Pirates have been lashing out at ODS in all directions since PM Petr Fiala kicked their chairman, Ivan Bartoš, out of the government. Fiala is run by godfathers, Finance Min. Zbyněk Stanjura makes 90% of the cabinet’s decisions, the budget is a Potemkin village – say the Pirates. They went into high-level politics as rank amateurs and got steamrolled by STAN and its underhanded use of preference voters, by Fiala’s violation of the coalition agreement and by Pres. Petr Pavel’s refusal to act as the guardian of that agreement. Ex-PM Petr Pithart wrote in his regular column in Právo on Sat. that the Pirates behaved like children when they got circled out by STAN and that we should fear such professional idealists. In politics, Pithart said, you have to be ready for everything, including dirty tricks, secret agreements and intrigue. So true, but the traditionalists in ODS should also remember that in the 21st century, it’s often the ornery children who end up dictating what the grown-ups get to do.

Post-election war possibilities
The U.S. presidential elections are in exactly two weeks, and there’s growing speculation about what outgoing Pres. Joe Biden will do between Nov. 6 and Jan. 19, esp. if Donald Trump is elected. Ex-Amb. to Nato Jakub Landovský told MFD that there’s a chance that the limits on the use by Ukraine of long-range weapons to target sites in Russia will be relaxed after the elections. The restrictions are being maintained as a way to signal to Russia, he said, that we haven’t reached the end of the escalation scale but could. Like Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is hesitating to go further, but his key rival, CDU Chair Friedrich Merz, is talking about reaching a joint European decision on approving use of long-range weapons. EU Affairs Min. Martin Dvořák (STAN) told Czech TV last week that he would definitely be in favor of giving Ukraine the go-ahead. He had also spoken in March in favor of sending Czech troops to Ukraine. Something for Czechs to keep in mind as Nov. 5 quickly approaches.

Taunting the business vote
The latest STEM and Kantar CZ polls released yesterday turned out overall much better for the Spolu parties than last week’s Median survey, but KDU-ČSL is still languishing in the 2-4% range. Newly elected Chair Marek Výborný, who is also agriculture minister, told Právo that the ruling coalition must make it clear to its voters what it’s able to achieve before next year’s elections and what won’t be possible and why. And a reasonable voter will understand this, he said, and will get up off the couch and go vote. In terms of policy items, he mentioned pension reform, the forestry law, the Green Deal and the hunting law, but he skipped over four that are of big concern to business voters. His KDU colleague Environment Min. Petr Hladík is intent on pushing through the deposits on PET bottles, Culture Min. Martin Baxa of ODS doesn’t think democracy can survive without raising the public-media fees, NÚKIB is pressing ahead with the cybersecurity law, and the new online building-permit system has been delayed until 2028. It’s almost as if Výborný and his cabinet colleagues are testing business voters to see how much they can take.

Drones not F-35s

One of the top stories today on FT.com is about Elon Musk’s criticism of the F-35 fighter. “His comments,” the Financial Times said, “have added fuel to a debate gripping the defense industry and its customers: Does the military still need expensive piloted fighter jets at a time when budgets are pressed and increasingly sophisticated drones are deployed to devastating effect in Ukraine and elsewhere?” This comes just as Nato is considering increasing its 2% spending minimum. The 2025 Czech national budget that was signed yesterday by Pres. Petr Pavel includes about Kč 14bn toward the purchase of F-35s. That would buy a lot of drones. While in Australia, Pavel defended Norway against criticism from Donald Trump and said that it’s able to do much more with 1.5% defense spending than some countries do with 3%. If Pavel truly wants to emancipate himself from the Fiala government, he can do it by using this same logic to oppose Czech defense spending that is merely designed to meet the numbers.

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