Václav Klaus
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Václav Klaus (IPA: [ˈva:ʦlaf ˈklau̯s]) (born 19 June 1941) is the second President of the Czech Republic and a former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic.
Klaus grew up in the residential Vinohrady neighborhood of his native Prague and graduated from the University of Economics, Prague in 1963; He also spent some time at universities in Italy (1966) and the United States (1969). It is relevant to note that, in this last case, Klaus not only left the country but voluntarily returned to Czechoslovakia after it was invaded in 1968 and was being "normalized" by the communist regime. He then pursued a postgraduate academic career at the (state) Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, which he left (supposedly, for political reasons) for the Czechoslovak State Bank in 1970; Klaus then joined the allegedly perestroika-minded Prognostics Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1987. In 1995, as Prime Minister, he was awarded a degree of Professor of Finance from his alma mater (the Prague University of Economics) and is, therefore, often addressed as Professor Klaus by his many admirers. It must also be noted that the communists régimes' vetting and approval - at the very minimum - was a requisite, pre-1989, in order to study and practice such sensitive subjects as economics in Czechoslovakia.
Political career
Václav Klaus entered full-time politics soon after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. As a member (and later chairman) of Civic Forum he became the federal Minister of Finance. In April 1991 Klaus co-founded Občanská demokratická strana (Civic-Democratic Party, ODS), the strongest and most right-wing of the post-Civic Forum splinter parties (and heavily populated by the "converted" nomenklatura). He remained its chairman until the autumn of 2002.
In June 1992, ODS won the elections in the Czech Republic with a reform program; Klaus' partys' counterpart in Slovakia was the former StB agent and boxer Vladimír Mečiar's nationalistic HZDS. It soon became apparent, among other elements, that Slovak demands for increased sovereignty were incompatible with the limited "viable federation" supported in the Czech lands (most vehemently by then-president Vaclav Havel); Both leaders assumed the premiership in their respective polities and quickly agreed, without consulting the electorate, on a smooth division of Czechoslovakia and its' assets under a caretaker federal government.
Klaus continued as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic after the 1996 election, but ODS's win was much narrower and his government was plagued by increasing instability, economic problems, and increasingly visible corruption. He had to resign in the autumn of 1997 after a government crisis caused by an ODS funding scandal, an event later called "Sarajevo Assassination", as it happened during his visit of Sarajevo at that time.
Czech President Václav Havel publicly referred to Klaus' economic policies as "gangster capitalism" in reference to the widespread corruption surrounding his policy of voucher privatization and his côterie of close allies such as the "entrepreneur" Miroslav Macek or his close friend the ex-member of the Communist Central Committee and StB honcho Vaclav Junek.
ODS lost the parliamentary elections in 1998 (due to an economic crisis and corruption scandals) and Miloš Zeman, chairman of the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD), succeeded Klaus as prime minister. The two closed an "opposition agreement" (opoziční smlouva) and so Zeman's minority government was supported by ODS: Klaus became the chairman of the lower house of Parliament, while Zemans' pre-electoral promise of "clean government" sailed into the sunset.
ODS was again defeated in the elections of June 2002; after long hesitations, Klaus, supposedly under pressure from his lieutenants, resigned as party chair in the autumn and was elected honorary chairman by an "unanimous" vote.
Presidency
Having lost a second General Election in a row, Klaus' hold on the ODS appeared to become weaker, and he announced his intention to resign from the leadership and run for president. This was taken by many to be a graceful way of retiring. He was elected President of the Czech Republic, not by universal suffrage but by a joint session of both chambers of parliament on February 28, 2003, thus succeeding Václav Havel, who had been one of his greatest political opponents since the division of Czechoslovakia.
This result may have surprised an outside observer: Klaus was elected at the third vote with just 142 votes out of 281, with, notably, communist support; The governing coalition, buffeted especially by feuds within ČSSD, was unable to agree on a common candidate to oppose him. He threatened to walk out of a press conference in France during 2003 when asked by a journalist to explain how he could reconcile asking for and receiving communist votes in the election for President with his previous (and subsequent) anti-communist positions. In spite of the manner of his own election, during 2005 he stated that he would refuse to appoint a cabinet which depended on communist support either directly or indirectly.
Václav Klaus still has many opponents, and his persistent arrogance is among the most benign of their criticisms: They depict him as a narrow-minded pragmatist interested only in lecturing about the technology of power and textbook economic precepts while practicing policies and approaches that are entirely contradictory but materially convenient to his friends. Beside his governments' mistakes and blatantly pervasive corruption, one of the most contested issues is his relation to Communism, both in the past and as a strengthening modern-day political party: Klaus has published articles praising "the grey zone" of the majority of ordinary people and their - at least passive - collaboration with communism which have earned him the gratefulness and loyalty of this same majority, while at the same time blasting the small minority of dissidents like Havel for their "haughtiness"... In an other article he has declared himself a "non-communist" but not an anticommunist, which he rejects as cheap and superficial posturing (even though he ran two election campaigns against the CSSD using the traditional 'red scare' against them): Klaus' Eurosceptic pronouncements, which directly pander to the public's nationalist instincts, and an apparent desire to be liked at the expense of a longer-term, more demanding agenda, also continue to attract criticism, as does his active reluctance to replace the 75% of judges and police force already in place during the communist regime..
Klaus' Euroscepticism - apart from such pronouncements as "I don't know what dirty money is" or his questionning of the existence of Czech WW II concentration camps for Roma - is the defining policy position of his presidency, and he includes criticism of the EU in most public statements. He described accession to the Union as representing the end of Czech sovereignty. In spite of this and his tendency to express his opinion on all issues, clearly sensing the overwhelming public mood in favour of joining (77% voted yes), he failed to advocate a side in the 2003 accession referendum. Subsequently he has maintained a steady barrage of articles and speeches against the EU and even ensured the publication in Czech of a work by the Irish Eurosceptic Anthony Coughlan, whose personal political career includes extreme-left allignments and a record of campaigning against every EU Treaty. In 2005 Klaus called for the EU to be "scrapped" and replaced by a free-trade area to be called the Organisation of European States which.
Klaus's popularity in public opinion polls grew rapidly in the first half of 2003, supported by blanket "soft" coverage from the country's largest newspapers, contrasting with an unpopular government and growingly populist rhetoric. It has remained around 60% since then.
In March 2006, the parliament overturned a veto by President Vaclav Klaus, and the Czech Republic became the first former communist country in Europe to grant legal recognition to same-sex partnerships.
Other activities
Václav Klaus is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. His vocal enthusiasm for the free market economy as exemplified by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and as practised by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, together with his belief in the Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand", was well known (and also often criticised). Others agree with his free-market concepts, but point out that during his premiership he neglected the importance of law (in particular battling corruption), largely ignored the enforcement of property rights, and "coincidentally" failed to remotely criticize the execution of the voucher privatization. Klaus has had articles published in the free market-oriented Cato Journal and elsewhere.
Václav Klaus wrote over 20 books on various social, political, and economics subjects, including a book about the first year of his presidency, Year One and another about "Year Two". These publications are generally collections of articles and speeches.
Personal life
Václav Klaus is officially married to Livia Klausová. They have two sons and five grandchildren.
External links
- [Biography] and [selected speeches] at the President's office
- [Wikiquotes] (in Czech only)
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