Blowing it.
Stransky, Martin Jan
In his speech announcing a new US-led initiative in arms reduction,
Barack Obama noted how unlikely it would have been at the time of his
birth to imagine that in the near future, an Afro-American president
would be speaking in the free city of Prague. Even less likely would
have been envisioning the Czech Republic as presiding over a new union
of European states. Today, both scenarios have been realized--the first
one successful, the second a total failure.
Unfortunately, the Czechs have done their best to live up to their
reputation as the political clown princes of Europe. Though Czech
premier Topolanek had some success in his first few months as EU leader,
he was soon eclipsed by the row over the Czech Republic's official
work of art contribution to the EU, the "Entropa," a huge
plastic mural with scenes caricaturing EU nations--Bulgaria as a Turkish
pisoir, Germany with highways in the shape of a swastika, Italy with
soccer players masturbating with the football, and so forth.
If this wasn't enough to endear the country to the EU, the
never-ending pubertal squabbling of the country's politicians led
to a vote of no-confidence and the downfall of the government in the
middle of the EU presidency. Predictably, the only person to welcome the
news was Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus, who refuses to fly the
EU flag above Prague Castle, claiming the EU is an organization just as
dangerous as the former Communist empire.
No wonder that the US presidential protocol team had an ulcer. The
official state dinner welcoming the US president went out the window,
and was replaced with a brief breakfast of the US and Czech presidents
and lame-duck premier. And since Topolanek, though married, has an
official mistress (one of the pre-requisites for gaining Czech
popularity), Michelle Obama had to take in Prague "on her own"
after being escorted by Mr. Klaus. In the end, Obama had his one-on-one
meeting with the only legitimate Czech politician who could be
found--former president and dissident Vaclav Havel.
The following day, the Czech government agreed to dissolve itself
and install a technocratic cabinet until the undetermined date of the
next elections. In doing so, they also quashed the work of the most
successful minister of foreign affairs in the country's history,
Karel Schwarzenberg and with him, any hope at all of a positive outcome
to the country's EU presidency.
Martin Jan Stransky
Physician, Publisher,
