Is fear of Miroslav Kalousek a psychological necessity for believing in Milos Zeman or at least in his postage stamp?

Imagine for a minute that Miroslav Kalousek disappeared from public life tomorrow. It feels nice, I know! But what would that do to the parliamentary election campaign of Milos Zeman or better said, to the parliamentary campaign of his postage stamp?

It would spoil it, for it is largely the spectre of Kalousek that sustains the Zemanite campaign -that and the stamp. The Zemanites constantly remind the lower 10 million of the dangers Kalousek poses to society, in an effort to distract people from the dangers posed by Zeman.

Kalousek today has been cast in the role of Emmanuel Goldstein, George Orwell’s figure of hate in ‘1984’. Goldstein exists on screen alone, a creation of Big Brother’s Inner Party members that serves to keep Outer Party members cowered and psychologically dependent on their insidious leader. The rest of the population, the ‘proles’ as Orwell called them in his novel, are given the mushroom treatment, that is to say, kept in the dark and fed manure.

In the Czech context, Goldstein is Kalousek (and occasionally Karel Schwarzenberg); the Inner Party members are SPOZ; the Outer Party members are CSSD; and the proles, the lower 10 million, you and me, the carp...

Throughout the presidential campaign, Zeman and his Inner Party members insulted, lied and abused in an effort to demonise Schwarzenberg and Kalousek. This is a deliberately provocative political tactic that works best when it gets the reaction it seeks. How Kalousek’s silence throughout the campaign, and Schwarzenberg’s refusal to be provoked by these ‘two minute Hates’ must have infuriated Zeman!

Unfortunately, Kalousek was unable to keep his mouth shut for very long. Zeman must have been thrilled by his hysterical reaction to the Istvan raids this summer! His verbal assaults on the police and public prosecutor provided Zeman with exactly the cover he needed to dress up an unscrupulous grab for power as an urgent defence of the people’s prosecutor against Goldstein, author of ‘The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism’, or better said in the Czech context, ‘....of a Collection of Oligarchs’.

Goldstein will never be jailed. To jail your hate figure is to miss the point entirely. It is not in Zeman’s interest to see Kalousek disappear –quite the reverse in fact. People must see Kalousek everywhere, an ever present danger plotting and scheming to hand over the property of the people to Catholics and German princes.

But Kalousek is real, I hear you say. Indeed. As real as the long standing and highly rewarding relationship between him and Zeman. A rational person with a memory slightly longer than that of a very large carp knows that Zeman’s past abuses of power were just as real as those committed by ODS and TOP 09. And some of Zeman's abuses were even committed together with Kalousek.

Ever since Oceania was at 'war' with Eurasia and Eastasia, the Ministry of Truth has been hard at work correcting the past. All memory of the time when Zeman drank, prognosticated and even prayed with Goldstein has been eradicated. The time when Zeman worked hand-in-glove with his coalition partner Goldstein and his British friends to persuade parliament to buy 24 new supersonic aircraft has been erased from the historical records by the ministry.

What makes Zeman different to other politicians today is not his probity. It is his determination to change the rules of a rotten political game. For the worse.

He has set about wrecking the cartel party equilibrium that has kept the same people in power for approaching a quarter of a century. His determination to punish those who failed to back his first presidential candidacy ten years ago is threatening to destroy even the pretence of competition between political parties, a pretence that has kept the carp biting at election time.

Surely public opinion will prevail? Surely people will reject this new, absolutist politics built around a hateful old man seeking revenge?

Do not count on it. Zeman skilfully and wilfully aggravates the frustration of voters at the failure of their country’s institutions. And the only desirable solution to the problem of the loss of legitimacy of parliamentary parties in a parliamentary democracy, the gradual recovery of that legitimacy, is rejected by Zeman.

Instead, he is hell bent on undermining what remains of the legitimacy of the country’s most popular party, CSSD, by splitting it in two and taking over the rump for himself.

And he will likely succeed. People appear to have lost patience with the laborious project of rebuilding. Certainly, neither Babis nor Bobosikova are the patient type.

In this context, it seems more probable that a majority of Czech voters will opt for a Slovak-Hungarian solution, with one immensely strong political leader controlling an absolute majority in parliament.

By Christmas, and unless people see through the Goldstein Hate, the only difference between the Czech Republic and its southern neighbours will be that here, our dear leader is on all the postage stamps as well. Unless of course the Slovak prime minister Robert Fico becomes the president in 2014.