in the falling periphery, they choose differently than rich Prague – A2larm
For decades, a similar scenario and a similar distribution of election results has been repeated, when the victory of people like Miloš Zeman or political groups like ANO overlaps with the map of the inner and outer peripheries, with the map of adjustment to unemployment, poverty or foreclosures. Most recently, we observe this “incomprehensible” anomaly resembling a kind of magical causality in the case of the first round of presidential elections. Lay and professional commentators from Prague newsrooms will look at all the available data, but in the end, with the expression of Joey from the series Friends, after a moment of concentration, they will snap out: people in the countryside vote differently than in Prague, because they are demented!
For example, Petr Honzejk from Hospodářské noviny: “It’s still fun. People on the periphery feel miserable. Eight let Babiš rule, who did not help them. And who do they enthusiastically vote for? Grandma, because she helps people!’
Then everyone laughs and agrees not to talk like that, lest the Neanderthals from the countryside find out. Because if we want them to vote like us, we have to trick them! Such a diabolical plan was prefaced by Joey after the lobotomy, Pavel Šafr, on his website Forum 24. In the text entitled The general succeeded. But the underestimation of the countryside must stop. We reach out to millions of households with a clear explanationbasically sums up the whole screen of “Prague” arrogance.
Having a problem and wanting to solve it with your choice is part of democracy. Denying the motives and problems of others and thinking how to deceive them is, on the contrary, a real erosion of democracy and values in the true sense of the word. There is no relevant difference between Šafre and Okamura.
Safr decided not to underestimate the stupid and insidious villagers and prepared a special edition of his newspaper for them, where he would draw for them who they should vote for. In the published preview, there are photos of Babiš and Pavel next to each other. One has the inscription of a liar and the other of a hero. It’s a wonder that Safr doesn’t send people a straight envelope with beads and colored slides. Even the communist propagandists for normalization had a higher opinion of the people than Šafr.
On his website and on Twitter, Safr continuously downplays or ridicules analyzes and comments pointing to economic problems and social difficulties that are the result of inflation and rising energy prices. For example, in September he was in Znojmo for the vintage and from the fact that people were buying expensive potato chips, he concluded that the crisis does not exist. In July he wrote on website, that talk of crisis and impoverishment is completely exaggerated. And before Christmas, a full parking lot in front of him served as proof of the non-existence of a crisis by Kaufland. Despite Šafra’s astute observations, in January the Czech Statistical Office, which runs a retail they fall seven months in a row. Neanderthals probably succumbed to propaganda.
Why do people mind not having a doctor?
Or at least they live with incomes with which, unlike Prague brains, they notice 20 percent inflation. Also, in the outer and inner peripheries of the country, they will notice that hospitals that once provided comprehensive care here have partially or completely collapsed, and people have to travel across the country to see doctors. Last spring, for example, a petition was created in the Moravian-Silesian region pointing out the sad fact that 100,000 people here do not have their dentist. While the Ministry of Health writes down what should be above standard, only standard care is missing. In the region where Babiš easily defeated Pavel.
At the end of spring I moved around Vítkovska, where we find together all the problems of common areas, where elections are different than in Prague. Collapsed hospital, a shortage of doctors, an aging and declining population, and always lower incomes and higher unemployment than the rest of the country. In the last year, I have been regularly dealing with the fact that public bus transport runs completely at random. Children on their way to school and adults to work are waiting for a bus that just doesn’t come. Other times, the train that would take them home doesn’t come, even though it should have. We follow the repair of one bridge in Prague in the national news, these problems do not even penetrate the regional one. Fortunately, people here will soon receive a manual from Šafra on how to vote so as not to be fooled.
Maple tree in Jesenice. Similar issues, similar election results. When I was cruising through it a month ago, a photo of Andrej Babiš, who had visited the city a while before me, jumped out at me on Instagram. Miloš Zeman was at a debate with people in nearby Vápenná a few years ago. Tomio Okamura is then the only one who posters these areas with his passwords. It’s not enough? Maybe. Has anyone else done more? No.
And it’s not just gestures. The increase in pensions is connected with Andrej Babiš. Raising salaries in the state sector as well. The same applies to education. And these segments are key in local economies. This is real money that came here thanks to the government.
When Honzejk mocks that Babiš did not help the local people at all, so why are they voting for him, he is simply not right. Although it is another matter that he did nothing at all with the structural problems and never even planned to do so. But the inner and outer peripheries threw all governments overboard. At least Babiš did something.
Uncontrolled inflation, on the other hand, is now associated with the government of Petr Fiala, and the advice of Markéta Pekarová Adamová, that people should wear two sweaters, still resonates here like the red rag of a talked-about lady from Prague. That the Czech National Bank, headed by Babiš’s former economic advisor, is also responsible for inflation Ales Michlwho decided to passively watch people get poorer, no one could explain it.
Everyone from these border areas goes shopping in neighboring Poland, where everyone sees that it is possible for food to cost a third to half of the republic less than it does in the Czech Republic, and at the same time taste better. On the receipt from the Polish store, it is written what the amount of tax is for most food: zero.
Saffron’s alternate universe
Pavel Šafr is in a completely different league. He laughs at reality and draws crazy conclusions from his confused observation of the world: “We should read the increased voter turnout in otherwise sleepy small towns as a manifestation of the disagreement of the naturally more conservative countryside with the liberal city.” Checkmate, rednecks. And he goes on about the frustrated villagers and the estebák who tamed them. It illustrates the long-standing disinterest of a large part of Prague’s political and media elites in life outside the agglomeration. The problem is not declining education, transport or healthcare. The problem is that they are bullies who do not respect democracy.
The countryside is just a problem that needs to be somehow tricked, tamed and given to us without having to spend our billions on its problems. Talking about liberal cities is completely wrong. After all, right-wing conservative parties are winning the elections in Prague. Such a thing is only possible in Eastern Europe.
In Prague, people think they vote differently because they are smarter. But as one drunken man said to Prague tourists in a pub in Vápenná: “Try to live here for sixteen gross.” Democracy is not threatened by people who vote for Babiš for their own reasons, but by the so-called elites who don’t even bother to pretend that they are theirs they are interested in motives and real problems. Having a problem and wanting to solve it with your choice is part of democracy. Denying the motives and problems of others and thinking how to deceive them is, on the contrary, a real erosion of democracy and values in the true sense of the word. There is no relevant difference between Šafre and Okamura.
It is legitimate to unmask Babiš’s simple expediency of actions, that he therefore dressed up in a social garb and pretends to be interested in some problems. He is in that sense a swindler and a fraud. But the same goes for those who want to apply the same strategy to take away his votes. The periphery chooses as it chooses, because for years Prague has only pretended that it is interested in life here. Furthermore, it is Prague and other large cities that suck out all the educated and qualified labor force and send back only the council of counts and executors.
Choosing Babiš won’t help the regions, but will keep them on the map as these threats. The question of what the people actually want, that they vote differently than they imagine in Prague. Elections are the only time when I am the center of eg my dull eyesight. When you vote against the government because the bus didn’t come to school for your kids and you don’t have a doctor, you’re not crazy. It’s just that you may have no other option to handle this to the government. It’s so simple that even Honzejk and Šafre could understand it. And whoever wants to win the presidential election must understand this.
The author is the editor of Alarm.