The past 30 years in the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution were undoubtedly a success. Czechia has become a normal market economy with functioning democracy and growing living standard of population, while main external objectives, memberships in NATO and EU have been fulfilled, with no enemies and immediate danger in the neighbourhood.
In spite of this, an uneasy feeling and resigned passivity spread all over the country. Many people have become phlegmatic to the state they co-own, and gloomy atmosphere makes influence on many things from weak and protracted public investment e.g. into transport infrastructure up to decreasing success in international sport competitions. The risk of burning one’s fingers for any idea, especially for the public interest or the flag is almost absent. Second grade politicians are prevailing on the political scene, often missing a strategy and courage for the future but the more trying to lure potential voters with partial compensations and promises not solving their long-term problems.
A recent opinion poll has shown that a considerable part of the society, about one third of people aged over 40 years, expressed the view that they were better off under Communism than today. It may also contain some nostalgia or defiance but it is necessary to take into account that some of our citizens really do not benefit from today’s general level of achieved development.
Many of those manifestations are by far not limited to Czechia; the atmosphere has generally deteriorated all over the Western world. Property discrepancies grow everywhere, as the analyses of Credit Suisse have convincingly shown, but in the Czech traditionally egalitarian conditions it hurts more than anywhere else, especially when there is a suspicion that some of the properties were not gained in a legally or morally justifiable way.
It is necessary to look at the role of society’s elites. During the Velvet Revolution and for some time thereafter, the elites, with a special role played by former dissidents, were virtually unanimous in their strive for democracy and market economy and successfully convinced the rest of the nation to accept even very swift and painful reforms. But the situation gradually changed to the worse. Some of those leaders of the change returned very early to their previous métier, others were shifted aside by more ambitious competitors, and some of them found an opportunity if the processes in the economy were insufficiently controlled. Manifestations like fraudulent privatizations, the dissolution of the promising Czech capital market that had been previously created by voucher privatization, and the so called “banking socialism” that had to be cured with immense contributions from the taxpayers, undermined the trust of broad public to the reforms and to the politics in general. Of course, some destructive and corrupt activities were to be expected during so profound changes, and their real extent may also be medially somehow exaggerated, nevertheless their existence earlier or later halted necessary reforms and gave birth to political populism offering sweet treats instead of bitter remedies.
The elites were too inconsiderate to those who were simply losing in the process of globalization. Insufficiently extinguished effects of the decline of obsolete industries with the decay of once preferred regions, aggressive consumer credit policy resulting in the fall of hundreds of thousands into the hands of distrainors, and above all the imported financial crisis after 2008; this all, justly or unjustly, contributed in the broad public to the feeling that the elites failed to lead the nation. It formed a very risky situation that might drive the country into a social rift and further decline of its position in the international comparison.
Czechia needs reforms again; beside the long delayed pension, health and education reforms also measures directed towards the support of new technologies and searching for investment into high value added production and into public infrastructures. New elites unsatisfied with the state of things have at first to unite on the vision about the future of the country. Even mass demonstrations we have recently experienced cannot help if no vision for the future is available to attract the majority of the society. This is a theme concerning not only people aged up to forty years but for all who care about the country or, at least, for own descendants, irrespectively of their political opinion and denomination. And then the most complex task may come to disseminate the vision in the political sphere and in the public maybe down to village pubs: listen to the problems of common people and propose solutions, convince and encourage, and, which is the most difficult, act in person as an example. Hard to do? We have for it a splendid past experience. The same was performed by patriots in the nineteenth century, everybody according to their competence and abilities, and the result was an economically excellent country and national independence.
The time is running and requires courage. It should be clear that an all-risk-averting strategy may be the worst risk averting strategy at all.
Emanuel Šíp
Partner
Allied Progress Consultants Association