The delegates of the weekend congress of Social Democracy overwhelmingly elected Jana Maláčová as chairperson. Maláčová first wants to put the party back on its feet and then create a broad left-wing alliance, negotiate a common agreement with other political entities and also trade unions. Maláčová says her inspiration in uniting the left is the French New People’s Front. According to her, this alliance should not question the Czech Republic’s membership in the EU. Topics on which she would like to agree with other subjects include increasing wages, improving working conditions, solving the housing crisis or reforming education. If he agrees with any of the left-wing entities, he will cooperate with him .

The STAČILO! (ENOUGH!) coalition could act as a good guide if it wasn’t already apparent at first glance that the only thing that connects these parties and individuals is that they are angry, they don’t trust the system and they are against the government.

Jana Maláčová can grasp important topics, grasp them from left-wing positions and, in addition, she understands that her policy is not meant to appeal to liberals who are not voters of social democracy, even if they keep commenting on it, but to appeal to her potential voters. She also has the necessary energy to lead negotiations. So the problem lies more in who she will negotiate with so that she manages to find an agreement on essential topics. A certain inspiration for many people on the left today is the STAČILO! (ENOUGH!) coalition. and whether SOCDEM should negotiate with Kateřina Konečná has been the subject of passionate debates on the pages of the Referendum Journal and the Argument website in recent months.

Slepenec ENOUGH!

The STAČILO! (ENOUGH!) coalition, which successfully ran in two elections, is proof for many that the success of the left is possible. However, when we look in more detail at what subjects actually ran in this coalition in the last elections, the effort to unite the left begins to appear much more complicated, since the leftism of many of them can be successfully doubted. To make matters worse, the entities that Kateřina Konečná of the Bohemia-Moravia Communist Party (KSČM) stuck together have such different program priorities that it is actually not clear where to place the coalition on the political map.

Kateřina Konečná, for example, warns against the introduction of administrative levies into the army and is strictly against conscription. They talk about [the rightwing politicians] Jana Černochová and Petar Fiala as warmongers. However, this does not prevent her from connecting with Michal Klusáček from the Czech National Social Party, who, on the contrary, wants to introduce conscription - at least in 2017 he had it as a program priority.

In addition, Klusáček says that in Germany, men dressed in women’s dresses with feathers go to kindergartens and tell children that they can choose their gender when they want to. The Czech National Social Party has on its agenda, for example, the reintroduction of the death penalty or the abolition of the public benefit status of the media, which are to be replaced by state television and radio. They will then have the mission to ’spread Czech and Slovak culture’. Or in the Home Law section, this party asserts that “when an intruder invades someone’s private property, its owner will be entitled to defend this property and his life by all available means, and when the intruder is physically eliminated, he will not be viewed as a criminal.”

Disinfo and chemtrails

Different misinformers are a separate chapter - for example, the number one in the South Moravian region, Petra Rédová, spread misinformation about Covid and believes that vaccination spoils people’s blood . The next acquisition of Konečné is Jan Skalický, who within the coalition SAČILO! ran for the European Parliament and now for the Senate. He became famous for questioning the flood at that time, and asking whether it was big enough to cancel events. To Konečná’s credit, she distanced herself from his words in the CNN Prima News pre-election debate.

A remarkable coalition partner is also the DOMOV (Democracy-Responsibility-Morality-Courage-Patriotism) party, which for STAČILO! (ENOUGH!) ran in the South Moravian Region. This party had, for example, in the municipal elections in Prague, the cancellation of bicycle lanes where they restrict car traffic. DOMOV would like to ban the display of foreign state symbols (e.g. Ukraine, Tibet, etc.) on municipal buildings or school buildings in Prague and also plans to return the original name to hastily renamed streets. They would like to return Ukrainians from areas where there is no war back to Ukraine and also want to cancel subsidies to all political non-profits (eg Prague pride). In the program theses, they promote the entry of the Czech Republic into the BRICS countries , ensuring the state’s real defense capability by introducing full-time military service and the creation of a functional militia. Here, again, absolutely contrary to what Konečná wants. Understandably, DOMOV also wants to ban “LGBT, homosexuality and gender promotion in all types of pre-school education, primary and secondary schools, protect children and youth from genetic experiments and mutilation, end all collaborationist and vassal ties to foreign dictation and Nazi and militant regimes.” Best above all, according to this group, the airspace “must not endanger chemtrails and other experimental activities.”

Right wingers and Islamophobes

Konečná does not hesitate to connect with right-wingers, such as agrobaron Zdeněk Jandejsek , who in the past cooperated with Trikolora and in 2010 signed an election campaign in which businessmen warned against a possible ČSSD government . Or with Ondřej Dostál, who is an MEP.

Another coalition partner is ČSSD, i.e. Paroubka’s Czech Sovereignty of Social Democracy, which ran in seven regions. According to the program, the politicians of this party believe that “Islam is not a religion like Christianity or Buddhism, but an integral part of it is also a political program, and Sharia law is incompatible with European law. It threatens our freedoms and the entire traditional European culture. As a political program, Islam spreads hatred, incites violence and deprives people of their freedom.” Koruna puts the crown on this with the belief that “it is an ideology as dangerous as fascism, Nazism or communism.” People from the KSČM either don’t mind that, or maybe they haven’t read the program. For these reasons, the Paroubkovs are against accepting the so-called legal migrants from Islamic countries. The party also defines itself against “political non-profits and gender fads.”

It can be expected that Jana Maláčová will pay a little more attention than Konečná to at least some ideological penetration and will try to build the left-wing alliance on programmatic priorities. STAČILO! (ENOUGH!) could act as a good guide if it wasn’t already apparent at first glance that the only thing that connects these parties and individuals is that they are angry, they don’t trust the system and they are against the government. When searching for common visions, it will be really difficult to find partners with whom SOCDEM can find at least the necessary basic agreement.

Saša Uhlová

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