Richard Beran

The Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Europe has been going on for over three months now, triggered by the Russian Federation's attack on the territory of Ukraine on Thursday 24 February 2022. Much has changed by this step for Europe and for individual states. In the Czech Republic, food and fuel prices are rising dramatically, the challenges of the pandemic received remarkably less highlight in the public communication, while many people are also fearful of the spread of the conflict and the use of nuclear weapons, as a recent poll by the private media outlet CNN Prima News showed. All these problems are in some way linked to political campaigning. In this brief commentary, I would like to look at how political campaigning is going in the Czech Republic in the light of the war in Ukraine.

In recent years, political campaigning has been almost constant in the Czech Republic. And no wonder, since every year there is an election. This year, we will have elections for municipal councils and the Senate, and at the beginning of 2023 we will have presidential elections, in which the biggest favourite is the leader of the opposition ANO movement, Andrej Babiš.

Despite his reticence to run for president, which he has not yet announced, the ANO movement's campaign is moving in this direction.

The main points of the current political campaign are the rapidly rising prices of food, energy and fuel, as well as the migratory wave of war refugees from Ukraine. The Czech government has taken many measures to help with the consequences of the war in Ukraine. Examples include increasing the housing allowance or reducing the excise duty on fuel. However, compared to some countries, the measures are not widespread and not on such a large scale (the reason is the high state budget deficit caused by the covid-19 pandemic), which is what the opposition is pointing out. The ANO movement has launched a campaign called "It was better under Babiš", where black and white photographs of citizens complaining that the government is doing nothing for them appear on billboards (e.g. Václav, pensioner: Just promises, they don't care about us anyway). However, after a few days, when these billboards flooded the entire Czech Republic, it turned out that these are not ordinary citizens, but partisans of the ANO movement. The opposition SPD movement is also campaigning on the wave of price hikes, but on top of that it plays on the sensitive string that the government is doing nothing for the citizens of the Czech Republic and only cares about Ukrainians. An example of this is the speeches made by SPD leader Tomio Okamura on the plenary of the Chamber of Deputies.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has also unleashed a war of disinformation around the world. And this on one side or the other. In the Czech Republic, the day after the Russian invasion began, several websites appeared which published news of a disinformation nature. The Internet association CZ.NIC, on the basis of Government Resolution No. 127, blocked eight disinformation websites for three months. This activity again provoked a harsh denunciation of the opposition to the government in the form of a political campaign in which the opposition parties accused the government of censorship (violation of Article 17 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms). However, it is questionable whether or not this was a legally justified intervention.

Personally, I believe that this measure was constitutional, because it was a contractual relationship between private entities and if there was a breach of contract, NIC.CZ acted in full compliance with the law. And even given that this was done on the basis of a government resolution, one cannot speak of direct pressure from the public authorities. So, according to my personal view, it was a completely legitimate step.

It is not for me to judge whether political campaigns, whether by opposition parties or government parties, are objective. These are political matters in their own way, so it will always depend on what programme and what values a given political entity promotes and recognises. And I also understand that there must be a "political struggle" at all times. However, I think that in such unprecedented crises, the Czech Republic should stick together, not divide its internal baselines even more.

May 2022

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The views expressed above belong to the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centre for Social Sciences.