By the time of the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Klaus entered the political scene as one of those clever and adroit Czechs who had never confronted the Bolshevik regime officially (and thus had managed to pursue a professional career) while at the same time avoiding open collaboration in terms of Party membership.
This ultra-pragmatic record was certainly less heroic than Havel’s firm opposition, but it was not a tremendous drawback for a politician at the start of the post-communist era. On the contrary, while Havel almost seemed larger than life, Klaus embodied the fate of millions of common Czechs who were neither Bolsheviks nor brave dissidents; only ordinary, uncourageous citizens who tried to live a happy life.
Thanks to his image as an ambitious commoner-cum-respected scientist (obviously, he was soon awarded with the academic title Professor of economics) and also his brilliant ability to sense exactly what people wanted to hear, Klaus’ political career got a flying start. He was the very man for the post of minister of finance in the first democratic government that emerged after the Velvet Revolution. He was, in 1991, the obvious founder and first chairman of “liberal-conservative” ODS, which won the Parliamentary elections a year later by a landslide, making him Czechoslovakia’s new Prime Minister.
The Klaus government’s battle cry was to effect radical economic reforms that would pull the country out of stagnation. Inspired by Maggie Thatcher and Milton Friedman, Klaus called for a mass privatisation of state industry and the introduction of a laissez-faire economy that in a decade or two would transform Czechoslovakia into Central Europe’s Switzerland.
Today, seen in retrospect, it’s evident that Klaus was far too cautious to introduce reforms that would disturb the social equilibrium of the Bolshevik era. In reality, he promised the reform-minded part of the population the radical changes they longed for, while he calmed those who were scared about the future, because his government avoided any change that would hurt too much. Some observers have called the practical application of this strategy Bank Socialism (Klaus forced state-owned banks to pour bad loans into industrial giants controlled by semi-dubious oligarchs loyal to him), while others prefer Václav Havel’s term Mafia capitalism (Klaus’ voucher privatisation is estimated to have cost billions in frauds and stripped company assets).
Yet in the first half of the 1990s, Klaus’ transformation unquestionably led to economic growth and relatively high employment, which in turn led Klaus, notorious for his arrogance and un-Czech immodesty (see: Egalitarianism), to conclude: “While the other post-communist countries are still laying on the operating table, the Czech Republic is already working out in a fitness centre.”
Unfortunately for the Czechs, Klaus’ reform miracle was a flop. By the spring of 1997, the economy was plummeting, and later that year his days as Prime Minister were terminated as well when businesspeople participating in the privatisation of industry confirmed that they had paid millions of korunas directly to the ODS’ party coffers (see: Pepa from Hong Kong).
A juicy corruption scandal mixed with economic crisis would have broken the neck of any ordinary politician. But Klaus is not an ordinary politician — he is the ultimate political survivor.
Basically, his tactics are quite like those of the Bolsheviks: he claims personal responsibility for everything that succeeds, such as the tranquil divorce with the Slovaks, while “external forces” (in Klaus’ instance his coalition partners or the Central Bank, in the Bolsheviks’ case evil capitalists) should be blamed for everything that goes wrong. When it’s impossible to blame a debacle on somebody else, such as the embarrassing sponsor scandal in 1997, Klaus is always innocent because “he was not informed by his subordinates”.
When questioned publicly on a touchy issue, Klaus’ standard reaction is to flood his unlucky opponent with accusations of behaving unfairly, using false arguments or being ill-prepared. Especially troublesome opponents are silenced with selected quotations of “highly respected scientists” (preferably Australian) who nobody ever has heard about. Only once, when asked if he found it ethical that his wife was sitting on the board of a large state company when he himself was running the government (see: Balkans), Klaus threatened to smash the impudent journalist’s face.
After the Czech miracle was silently buried and Klaus’ overt hopes of international recognition as a reform wizard evaporated, he swiftly switched his image as an economics expert to one as an ardent guardian of Czech national identity (which he doesn’t bother to define), heavily intoxicated by Europhobia.
The Czechs must not, according to Klaus, dissolve in Europe like “sugar in a cup of coffee”. The thought that Portuguese officers may one day come to command Czech soldiers in a EU army or that — heaven forbid — German police officers will be allowed to operate in the Czech Republic gives him the shivers, and the Euro is, of course, only a conspiracy invented to strip Europe’s smaller countries of their last piece of national sovereignty. Logically, when the country on May 1, 2004 celebrated its EU membership, Klaus ostentatiously visited the Blaník Mountain — home of the legendary knights that will save the country in its darkest hour. A few days later he added that the EU’s “sneaking federalization” represents a greater threat to the Czechs than the Bolshevik regime.
Incredibly enough it seems that the wily opportunist Klaus once again has found a profitable way to success. The Bolsheviks were strongly attracted by his nationalism, open detest of the supra-national Catholic Church and Europhobia, and only thanks to their support, the Parliament elected him to succeed Václav Havel as president in 2003.
During his first year as head of state, he was manically focusing on two goals: to replace his common image as an unsuccessful politician and honorary chairman of a corruption-tainted party who says peculiar things like “There isn’t any practical difference between clean and dirty money” with the image of a mild and caring president (who will certainly be re-elected in 2008); and second, to oppose, with an almost pathological fervour, everything Václav Havel symbolized.
Klaus uses tame newspaper journalists and the trash TV Nova to show he has a younger mistress than his predecessor, he ostentatiously throws out most of the art objects that Havel installed at the Prague Castle, and he sincerely claims that the economic seminaries he organized in the 1980s represent a more significant contribution to the fall of communism than that of Havel and the Charter 77.
So, what kind of politician is Václav Klaus really? Is he a super-shrewd and opportunistic power technocrat, a Czech version of the xenophobic Austrian Jörg Haider, or just another of those populist nationalists that post-communist Europe has been full of since 1990?
He is definitely more educated and cultivated than Slovakia’s “terminator” Vladimír Mečiar, and contrary to the ex-Yugoslav Katzenjammer Kids, Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Miloševic, he must be described as a democrat. But when one compares his political rhetoric in the 1990s with the practical results of his governments, he reminds of that type of married man who brags to all his hospoda pals that he has found himself a young and beautiful mistress (see: Sex), while in reality he is a homosexual.