Andrej Babiš is not related to Václav Havel


Reread Act 3, Scene 7 of Richard III to understand exactly the game our Czechoslovak 'Duke of Gloucester' is playing today.



Bastard child

In mid-2011, Andrej Babiš registered the domain Civic Forum Against Corruption.cz, the first sign of his determination to take up the mantle of Václav Havel. A comparison of ANO 2011 and Civic Forum is more instructive that one might think, and not only because of their infiltration in both cases by agents of the state security services (see here ). Both are single-issue protest movements held together by a dominant personality, in each case dragged into politics apparently against his will.

We are asked to believe that Andrej Babiš, like Václav Havel, had power 'buckled on his back' by a grateful citizenry, and in the case of Havel, we sense that this reluctance to lead was not feigned. "I do not have the right profile to lead a new revolution", said Babiš in 2011, echoing Shakespeare's Duke of Gloucester, who concealed his ruthless ambition to be king behind a false modesty and affected religiosity, insisting that 'I am unfit for state and majesty ... so mighty and so many are my defects'. Reread Act 3, Scene 7 of Richard III to understand exactly the cynical game our own Duke of Gloucester is playing today.

Civic Forum quickly disintegrated, although the yearning for a loose and ill-disciplined political movement still persists in the souls of many today. For some, ANO 2011 satisfies this dissident yearning. Will ANO 2011 disintegrate, as Civic Forum disintegrated, or has the 'movement' as a political form come of age, 25 years after its Havelian forebear broke up into political parties and disgruntled intellectuals?

In short, is ANO 2011 here to stay, a political form that resembles Civic Forum on the surface, but is in fact its bastard child, with an altogether harder and more sinister character?


The bastard comes of age

We know what ANO 2011 is against (the political party), but it is less clear to us what it stands for. Where, then, is this new driving force in Czech politics leading us?

The Babišist seeks, not an adjustment to a party-based parliamentary system, but its abolition. ‘Babišism’ is a system in which power is mobilised, not by conventional political parties, but by political movements with properties not unlike amorphous solids such as glass: when heated up, as now, they have no defined shape, but in the cold light of day, after we ourselves have sobered up, they have the potential to cut our foolish democratic throats.

Political parties are led by a college of individuals bound by rules and held accountable by thousands of party members, whereas this bastard of Civic Forum is led by one overwhelmingly dominant individual (ANO 2011 has no vice chairmen, for example) with a great lust for power, supported by a cadre of dependent subordinates accountable directly and only to him, and empowered by hundreds of thousands of frustrated individuals.

Here is a useful way of understanding what we are now living through. Think of the mainstream Czech political parties today as the squabbling democrats in Klement Gottwald’s elected post-war government, and ANO 2011 as the Communists in that government. I do not mean to compare them in an ideological sense, but to compare their commitment to the rules of the system in which they operate.

For Czechoslovakia’s post-war democrats, as for the Czech Republic’s mainstream parties today, the rules of the system were accepted as permanent. These rules may have been abused but their general validity was never questioned. In contrast, for Czechoslovakia’s post-war Communists, as for Babišists today, the rules of the system were regarded as dispensable.

What rules? Above all others, the rule that the executive, legislative and judicial powers of government are to be kept separate. Until February 1948, the Communists promised solemnly to uphold the rules of Czechoslovakia’s parliamentary system, including the principle of the separation of powers. They then abandoned it.

And the Babišists? Do they regard this principle as unchallengeable? They do not. Babišism makes a virtue out of the concentration of power: it encourages a blurring of the lines of separation between the three branches of government.

The bastard's twin

The assault begins in the absolutist, controlling nature of their spiritual (and financial) leader and his determination not to be held accountable. The ANO political movement is no more democratic an organisation that its Siamese twin, Agrofert, a conglomerate with one owner, a small handful of bosses and thousands upon thousands of employees.

Each lesser boss holds power over his bit of this spreading organisation, and each in turn is subordinate to the greater boss above him, all the way to the top of the organisation, where stands Babiš himself, boss of them all.

There is no separation of powers in Agrofert, nor is there one in ANO 2011. Both are hierarchical structures: every entity in the organisation, except one, is subordinate to a single other entity.

The Babišist wishes to impose this sensible managerial structure on government, where it does not belong, at least not in a civilised system of government. In his view, the collegiate structure of a party-based system of government is above all inefficient, breeding corruption by allowing the mediocre to hide behind their colleagues and to blur responsibility.

For the democrat, the great strength of this collegial approach to government is the collective responsibility for cabinet decisions that it imposes: decisions are reached together around a cabinet table, with all the inefficiencies this necessarily entails. For the Babišist, this is an anathema.

The Babišist displays an impatience with this collegial (some might call it ‘political’, the English political philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, called it ‘conversational’) approach to decision-making, preferring instead the crystalline lines of responsibility typical in a well-managed hierarchy. For him, responsibility travels up or down but never across.

The Babišist finds no good reason to separate powers in a world of expert managers committed to an efficient execution of decisions decided from above. Any failure in the system is dealt with efficiently, by removing the manager and replacing him with another.

This is easily done: the Babišist chooses unelected experts to fill his cabinet. By definition, such people have no political muscle of their own. These technocrats are appointed and approved by elected Babišists (we dare not call them ‘politicians’), making their appointment democratic.

But for how long? A cabinet of ministers filled only by unelected technocrats (though appointed by elected ‘non-politicians’) is the ideal to which the Babišist aspires. This radically undermines the separation principle by divorcing power and responsibility.

The technocrat (for the sake of topicality and style, let us call him ‘Tok’ after our new transportation minister) has no real power other than that lent him by the Babišist. If Tok the technocrat fails in his task, well, he will be fired, however hard he might plead that he is being held responsible for matters over which he never had any real control (that stayed in the hands of the Babišist).

It is clear to me that cabinet ministers cannot be appointed and removed at the whim of Andrej Babiš alone: the head of state and prime minister must approve a ministerial nomination for it to be accepted, so there is a limit placed on his ability to hire and fire cabinet ministers at will.

Today. But if Andrej Babiš were to become the prime minister? Or if he were to become president and a Babišist (Tok, for example) were to become prime minister? What would this do to those precious limits? They would evaporate.

Such a development is realistic. It very much depends upon what Andrej Babiš intends. If he chooses to become the next head of state, then who, realistically, can now stop him, either in the country at large or within his own political movement?

Who can compete with his funds, his undiluted power and freedom from accountability (except to his adoring masses and nothing must be allowed to come between him and those masses)? Above all, who can compete with Babiš’ contempt for the rules of the system he hopes to destroy?

We have already witnessed the arbitrary way in which the Babišist behaves towards those that are fondly called his ministerial colleagues but who, properly speaking, are his subordinates. All are, in principle, disposable, and their disposal is welcomed by his followers as proof of the Babišist’s willingness to acknowledge his error (unlike the wicked party politician, who dresses up nepotism in a language of party loyalty).

But this is a faulty reading of the true motive behind the behaviour of the Babišist, which is to prefer subordinates to colleagues, experts with no independent power of their own, precisely because such types are more easily disposed of when they let him down.

Another way of explaining the concealed contempt in which the Babišist holds the principle of the separation of powers is his response to the suggestion that he might face a ‘conflict of interests’. He discounts the problem by dismissing it as a contradiction in terms: no Babišist, by definition, could abuse a conflict because he is not a party politician.

The Babišist is a 'professional ruler', or as Vaclav Havel put it in his essay 'Politics and Conscience', "an 'innocent' tool of an 'innocent' anonymous power, legitimized by abstraction and objectivity - that is, by everything except personal responsibility to human beings as persons and neighbors".


Bread and...newspapers

There is a third way to understand the threat that Babišism poses to this founding principle of a free society, and that is his attitude towards the media. In his discussion with Echo24, the Czech philosopher, Václav Bělohradský, poses the question of whether Babiš is using his control over large parts of the local media to create a public space in which citizens are better able to exercise their political judgement. The implication of his question is that Babiš might be using his media power to close this space.

A more robust approach is required here, it seems to me. We should point out, again and again, that by building up such a formidable position in the Czech media market, Babiš has already answered the Czech philosopher’s question. He has already shown his contempt for a long-standing convention in civilised societies like this one that politicians should never own media, regardless of their intentions, good or bad. And please do not mention Berlusconi at this point: Berlusconi was not the product nor the plaything of a totalitarian intelligence service.

If our role as citizens is merely to sit and wait to discover what the intentions of one man are towards matters that directly concern our freedom, we have already abandoned our duty as citizens to make political judgments.

And when we lose our facility to form political judgments, we become non-citizens, ripe for Babišism.