Yes, I'm Czech living in Prague. Last 4 years the Prague local government was led by ANO, the party led by StB (communist secret police) member billionaire Andrej Babis. Their campaign was extremely strong then and they won - today Prague is in horrendous state, bridges are literally falling down (2 more just this week), traffic is worse (extremely worse!) than ever due to idiotically planned long roadworks that have to be soon redone and zero construction of much needed infrastructure, the public transport is way worse than it was, taxi mafia is still the same, they caused a huge housing bubble... And on top of that Krnacova calls Prague people who don't like it "whiners", repeatedly and on purpose - she even recently confirmed that it's exactly what she wanted to say.
The major implication for the whole country is that at least Prague citizens are absolutely fed up with ANO - that is important because they dominated the whole country politics for the last 2 periods. Today there are 2 other major parties - ODS (Občansko-demokratická strana, Civic Democracy Party) and the Pirate party. These are the three winners of the recent parliament vote - parliament politics affect local politics a lot in the Czech Republic. If you don't want to vote ANO then you vote ODS if you're more on the right (as in free market) and the Pirate party if you're more on the left. There are basically no other options - the remaining "major" (bigger than others but has almost no influence) party in the country is a racist one. Other previously major parties such as ČSSD (social democracy), KDU-ČSL (the Roman-Catholics) and KSČM (literal communists) have fallen down significantly over last 2 periods, most probably because of their cooperation with ANO.
Pirates have a good track record as far as local politics go, but it's a relatively new party and they only participated in smaller cities/villages so far (on top of their recent entry to parliament). This person is completely unknown. Let's see.
Basically the problem of whole east europe (although we like to call ourselves central europe) - too much crap left over communist rule and twisted mentality (ie everybody for themselves, screw the rest). Extremely rich individuals openly influencing politics, laughing at the cameras and enjoying being in spotlight.
Prague is a beautiful city to visit, be it for a weekend or a week. But living there long term sucks - most of the Prague apart from historical centre is properly fugly, as soviet-style architecture is still all over the place, cramped high rise residential areas with high criminality, little nature around (major mountains are > 500km away, sea even further), Czech love to constantly complain and moan about almost everything (it really gets to you after some time). Gap between rich (ie IT workers, managers) and rest of population is big and widening, people constantly hate politics but vote an a-hole after a-hole for last 20 years. So rich often discuss how to shield themselves financially from the rest of country, politics and economy as much as possible - not an indication of paradise. Half of the country is xenophobic and/or racist (although ie Roma question is a complex one).
I've worked there for couple of years, to be successful in IT was trivial due to constant lack of senior people, from what I heard its even worse now due to massive off/near shoring of multinationals. When looking back, moving away was one of the best decisions of my life and major step up in quality of life.
Of course there are positive aspects, just like everywhere. Professionals (I can judge IT) are smart and work hard, beer is the best there is (for me) and as mentioned its a great starting point for career. There are people who consider it the best place for them. Interestingly, none I know in this category lived abroad for longer to properly compare.
No nature in Prague? Where did you move that's better? There is lots of nature within Prague: Petrin, Prokop Udoli, Divoka Sarka, Stromovka, Krcsky les, Kunraticky les, Hostivar, Milicovsky les,... Mountains (Krkonose... but you can ski there) are like 120km away. And there is lots of other nature areas within 100km, hills, valleys, rock formations, castles, dams.
Yeah, true but some of us have higher expectations. Krkonose is the best you can get there, I would call them hills. Beautiful hills, but nothing close to mountains like Tatras/Alps, nor the experience of being there, or doing some more serious adventures. Around Prague its desperately flat, good maybe for road bike.
But that's me, I love these high altitude places, and based on amount of Czech you can meet anywhere in the Alps even people there love them. The thing is, high mountains are the last place of true wilderness, rest has been conquered and cultivated long time ago and is usually just a substitute for things that were.
I've met people in Prague that didn't get this, they were asking what the heck am I doing in those stupid mountains. Everybody is different, the only thing important is to be happy with where you are. I've found my place (Switzerland, in 45 minutes drive I am right under Mont Blanc).
I agree with the most of the above. Although the city is beautiful and has many green areas, renting in these areas is out of reach without heavy research and one is more likely to end up in the sad and gray districts. Attractive areas are basically inhabited by tourists and rich kids from Scandinavia and Anglophone countries, having some fun, trying to find a partner (and end up dissappointed - stop watching so much porn, kids!), then moving back after a year or two.
The nature of the outsourcing/nearshoring industry sets the top limit for the salaries at ~90k CZK annually and imply problems with finding senior professionals.
Trust me, when it comes to complaining about trivial things, you can't beat the Dutch. They live in this incredibly well run country but still complain about everything all the time. It's crazy. Oh, wait...
Ex-communist probably. Romanians also like to complain. I think it's what people do when they feel powerless. They don't see what else to do other than complaining. Problem is you tend to complain even when you could do something about it.
Definitely a side effect of communism, you can see how different it was if you read older literature, newspapers etc. The comparison can be made between Eastern and Western Germans.
Post-communist rather. Romanians also complain a lot, the grass is always greener in the neighbour's lot, if they do associate they'll most likely screw it up as every person pulls in a different direction (for themselves).
It's quite saddening to read CZ has similar issues. We've been in CZ in 2007 and Prague in 2017. I liked Prague a lot in 2007, not so much after ten years.
It's not for the top 10%. It's on the more expensive side of things but a software engineer should be able to afford it. There are other companies like Taxify or Liftago that are cheaper. The public transport works pretty well as well, you don't need to use taxis much if you live here.
Maybe you're right. Somewhere in this discussion someone was talking about disconnect between the rich and the poor and to be completely honest, I'm completely disconnected. Everyone around me can afford it, I don't know anyone who can't except for my family members who are retired.
> If you don't want to vote ANO then you vote ODS if you're more on the right (as in free market) and the Pirate party if you're more on the left.
Can you explain more what the platform of the "Pirate" party is? As an American I would have thought the the "Pirate" party would be far right libertarian (free market, downsize government, reduce or eliminate taxes).
They're right in the center of the Cz political scene.
The context is that we have very big gov't with lot of benefits, and (kind of, it's complicated) high taxes.
In such situation left has nowhere else to go (defending status quo is not very popular), so it's full of (often stupid) populists.
"Intellectual" elite is heavily leaning right, to the point of being anti-populist (they are regularly sacrificing votes just to virtue signal).
Pirates seem like a non-bullshit party that tries to stray from both extremes. They had some PR fails (they sometimes seem amateurish), but mostly seem to be really good alternative for people wanting to limit the gov't but not cut it to little pieces.
In the Czech Republic they're center to left, definitely not free market/libertarian. They propose government control of many issues like for example shared economy or housing, banking etc.
At the same time yes, they propose to downsize the government and tax reduction, but not elimination. They also propose digitalization of government and reduction of bureaucracy, but they also want that as a base to build more control on.
Many specifics of the Czech Republic are at play here, since the party is no longer a minor one and at the same time is the only major "non traditional" one (no historical baggage including people - actually that's very important) that isn't Babiš (ANO, but everyone knows the party is him, basically - including people in the party who went public), it attracts the interest of many very different people ranging from left wing radicals to free market anarchists; people who weren't as "radical" (they're not radical at all but definitely more than other parties) rather joined ODS (right, major party), ČSSD (left, almost irrelevant) or TOP09 (center, now totally irrelevant).
Then the free market anarchists created their own party (Svobodní - "The Free Ones", never even became relevant except a very tiny little bit of relevance in the EU parliament) and the result is that Pirate party is more leftist. Sadly soon after conservatives have "attacked" (joined and changed the program) the party and made it conservative, and a lot of previously pro-free market people became conservative because of the immigration crisis and rapidly increasing EU influence that nobody here really likes, left or right (these same issues also gave rise to the fourth biggest party SPD, which is an openly racist pro-russian one, luckily they're largely irrelevant except for municipal politics in few places).
Your disdain for Krnacova [ANO] is palpable. Typical for Praguer, similar to disdain for Trump in major liberal US cities.
You make them look like they actively go around destroying bridges. One footwalk collapsed by accident and people rushed to investigate other bridges to prevent another collapse. Of course they found them in state of crumbling down so obviously tehy had to be shut down/prepared for reconstruction. You attribute the blame to ANO while it was more due to chance.
You listen too much to house development lobby if you attribute the housing bubble to them. It'm more likely caused by global historically low interest rates.
The taxi mafia question is hardly going to be solved unless the next government has economic understanding of the problem. By appeasing to all parties involved they can hardly move it forward.
Well, where on earth have the billionaire "tough" leaders been good for their country? Is there even a single example where someone is a billionaire, not in government who wins political power and does a good thing? In eastern Europe there's this additional common situation of rich billionaires who got their money from dodgy or likely illegal practices - they adopt nationalism because it benefits them to attack the naive and "weak" democratic governments. Think Putin.
Czech here. We will see. He's totally unknown, without any experience in politics. But after the previous disastrous mayor, it's pretty hard to be worse.
According to [1] the previous mayor was Adriana Krnáčová [2]. There's not much information there. Can you elaborate why she was disastrous? There seems to be a connection to the Blanka tunnel complex [3]?
From my point of view: most building and development were stopped or stuck, so prices of flats skyrocketed and infrastructure was not maintained.
Part of reason was overreaction to the mayor who built the tunnel - the construction was overpriced and took 10 times the time it should, so mayors after him were afraid to invest too much in infrastructure at all. Which had negative effects in bridges falling apart, and city being in permanent traffic jam.
My other point of view: I used to be active member of Czech Pirate Party years ago when it was small, and it is still a little funny and frightening to me at the same time that those people will be responsible for city of 1 million people. But, what's the worse that can happen...
Blanka tunnels is an older issue, but under Krnáčová the entire Prague traffic system basically collapsed. There are frequent traffic jams and basically all bridges are in disastrous state.
Libeň bridge, one of the only few Cubist style bridges in the world, has been closed for past two years, Troja pedestrian bridge collapsed last year and just a few days ago it turned out another bridge has to be collapsed and rebuilt from scratch.
Add to that the fact that she called the people complaining about the traffic issues "zpovykaní" or whiners and that adds up to a lot of people not liking her at all.
This was amazing. A friend of mine has bought a humble flat and got 100% profit on the investment in just a couple of years! What are the chances the prices are going to fall significantly? Should I advice him to sell now?
It's usually nice to advice as long as you don't insist you're right and as long as the person you advice doesn't follow your advices blindly but just takes your opinion and the observations behind it in consideration. For some people that can't handle advices the right way a misleading (and the chances it's misleading are always high) advice can be very harmful but for others advices from reasonable people that know what they're saying can be a valuable source of information. Anyway, that was me who has told him "my opinion is you should buy this flat now!" to remove his hesitations and it turned out a huge win, I feel like I should also provide a clue when to sell to secure it perhaps.
If you compare Prague prices to local salaries, they are crazy inflated. But if you compare it to other european capitals, it's not so bad. I don't think that prices will collapse any time soon.
I voted for the Pirates but actually hoped that the leader of another party in the coalition, Jan Čižinský, would become tha mayor. He has proven himself to be a successful and effective manager
when he was in charge of Prague 7. Hřib was never in such a high level position.
Regarding the implications, all 3 parties in the coalition mostly agree about everything. I'm happy about the result and about ANO losing.
We will see, pirate party here is growing up and this is their first important role. It might end up great or they might get eaten by old school mafia type business people.
There's a joke going on that the Pirate Party is the IT department of the communist party.
In general the trouble with Pirates is unpredictability. They are very socially liberal, but economically and geopolitically they attract a wide mix of opinions. The have a higher incidence of conspiration theorist, they have a strong anti-US base, and in general they avoid to address these topics since it cannot pass the internal voting that is part of their control structure. In communal politics it does not have so severe implications, so the biggest question is how fit he is managerial wise.
The new mayor was virtually unknown before the election, it's just a gamble at this moment and everybody is "let's wait and see, can't be worse than the previous arrogant mayor Krnacova from ANO"
> There's a joke going on that the Pirate Party is the IT department of the communist party.
Yes, because in Eastern Europe, if you're even slightly left, or don't agree with U.S. on everything, you must be a communist.
Apparently from one block to the other.
As someone from that part of the world, I generally find it annoying that people automatically assume left == communist because of the Soviet past. As a result, we mostly have only right-wing or neoliberal type parties in Eastern Europe, because if you propose any sort of social democracy, you'd end up being attached to communism.
I view it as very unfortunate and simplistic. As in, communism didn't work out, let's run waaay to the right. Oh, right is bad? Let's run even further to the right, that outta fix it!
(Failing to realize that what you really dislike is authoritarianism, which these all share.)
How about a social democracy? The Scandinavian model? Market economy with strong social programs.
So you could start a business without being absolutely mortified about what'd happen if it fails, for example? How else is the overall standard of living supposed to improve over there? Corporate tax cuts and trickle-down economics has been tried, it doesn't work.
Social security is one thing, but the Czech Pirate Party doesn't want just that. Actually social security is not even on their current program, they have different leftist ideas they try to implement like governmental control of shared economy, housing, ...
So to answer your point, how do you start a business while being mortified whether you're breaking some law and whether what you're doing is even allowed at all, and whether you'll become unable to pay all the taxes and afford all the compliance required, and whether your business will become illegal next year (happened to many people here already, it's absolutely not an irrelevant fear - actually Airbnb is the livelihood of many people in Prague and the Pirate party essentially wants to destroy or at least very significantly impact their businesses)?
That's why we have the joke. Not because everything left is automatically bad - ČSSD was the leading party for many years as well as KDU-ČSL. There is no party that stands for the Nordic model.
And people don't like the USA here, btw.
However...
> (Failing to realize that what you really dislike is authoritarianism, which these all share.)
ČSSD as well as KDU-ČSL are very much centre/-right parties, which is what I meant by neoliberal. They're not left, they're part of the problem. This is like the Democrats in the U.S. They don't actually represent the left, they got co-opted by the same interests as the Rebuplicans + they don't hate gays, (great, but a low bar).
So in essence these sorts of parties are no different than the right ones, they stand for incrementalism+cronyism and because incrementalism doesn't work for many people they turn to the right as a result.
If you think to Bernie Sanders vs Hillary Clinton, parties like ČSSD and KDU-ČSL represent the Hillary type, but what you really need on the left is the Bernie, or even better, Jeremy Corbyn type of person/party.
I agree that corrupt bureaucracy is a problem, but breaking barriers to entry for small/medium businesses is on top of the left-wing agenda in parts of the world where real left actually is, that's why when you think of European startups, you think Scandinavia.
> There is no party that stands for the Nordic model.
That's because the Nordic model is a nuanced one and from my experience you get shouted at as if you're a communist if you ever mention it in Eastern Europe, mostly because people don't understand it, but it's hard to even make your case without getting attacked.
That is the thing. Nobody knows yet. So far from what I have actually seen in their actions, there are more along the lines of mild-mannered dreadlocked bureaucrats with technological-streak.
Not even Czech people can read the future. All I hope for is that he will lead well. The important thing here is the change in the leading coalition.
Prague is also divided into smaller parts, that have their own leadership, and that is also important for individual citizens. In the part where I live, I was quite happy with how it changed in the last 4 years. There were things that were built, that improved my life, and there were public and priate projects started that will improve it even further. Even on the whole city level, the public transport got significantly cheaper 3 years ago.
On a slightly off-topic note, I've been playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided the last few weeks, which takes place in Prague, so this headline made me wonder for a moment if I was in-game...
I wouldn't call them moderate left. They have quite few right wing policies in their program - lowering taxes, flat tax rate, keeping deficit low, removing bureaucracy.
They would be appealing to people who are right wing economically, but don't like the conservative/religious baggage, which comes with US republicans or UK's conservatives.
Yes but at the same time they're proposing more government control on issues like Airbnb, Uber, etc. Regardless of whether I or you think it's good or bad, it's leftist.
Low taxes are not necessarily rightist, people would want low and fair taxes even within a full-on socialism; same with everything else you listed, IMO these ideas are neutral. Keeping deficit low is just basic financial management, everyone wants that regardless of their ideas about control.
The difference is whether they want more free market or more government control, even if the control is very cheap, straight forward and efficient or even beneficial, it doesn't matter.
The Chinese communist party also lowered taxes and tries to lower bureaucracy but remains communist (I know, it's much more complex - let's not dive into Chinese politics - and I'm not trying to compare them, just an example how a popularly "rightist" idea can be proposed/implemented by a leftist party).
But yes, as you said they're appealing to people on the right - because as someone who's pro-free market it's better to vote moderate left (and hope they won't focus on the ideas you don't like) than conservative right (who will definitely focus on ideas you don't like these ideas are their main point).
I'm not sure but what is a party if not radical communist when its leader proposes a ban on private flights because "normal people should not be able to afford it", supports nationalization of private property and so on?
I know the leader has departed but obviously he had the party's support. He lost support because of bad election result, not because they didn't agree with him. From my discussion with other significant Green party members that want to nationalize infrastructure companies, ban cars, increase taxation a lot, redistribute wealth in large amounts etc I'm not really sure what else should they be if not radical communists.
Please don't call people who aren't actually fascist "radical fascists" ever again. It's a huge insult here; the fascists killed a lot of my family.
Fun fact for others: We call the Green party "The Watermelons" - because they're green on the outside but red on the inside.
Greens do not hold any political function AFAIK (edit: they still have a few senators). In the past few elections they usually gained only around 3 % of votes.
Our 'proper' left parties that have some power are those old-school leftist parties that are pro-Russian. The irony is that they are usually quite fond of Trump.
Czech Republic was never part of the USSR. Warsaw pact, yes. Heavily influenced (and invaded 50 years ago) by the USSR, yes. But you'll look a bit clueless if you say it was in the USSR, and people won't take your opinion seriously.
I don't think that means what you think it means. "leftists" in the US generally prefer "progressive" and tend to stand for equality and social services. The goal is less income inequality and a higher standard of living for everyone. It is the "a rising tide lifts all ships" kind of idea. This is why they often support higher minimum wages and job training programs for unskilled people to learn skilled jobs.
TOP09 + Mayors + Christian democrats + Liberals - pro EU right/centrists. Quite sane and with some experience.
Praha Sobe - an local movement led by a popular mayor of one of Prague neighborhoods Cizinsky. Hard to characterize in left/wing system.
Not included:
ODS - "right wing" mix of conservative populists, anti-EU nationalists, local department of corruption and some sane and competent people. Aggressive anti-pirates campaign put them out possible coalitions (though they got most votes).
ANO - technocratic/populistic party lead by an StB agent billionare. They screwed the last 4 years really big way (collapsing bridges...). Spent zillions on campaign in the last year.
Not even got any seats: soc-dem (Left wing. Local department of corruption and without sane/competent people. Screwed the last 4 years big way together with ANO), greens, communists, SPD (not even trying to pretend they are not fascist any more), other local formations, circus party (don't ask, please)...
The funny thing is, my last experience with Prague was that I chose two random restaurants to go into and the waiters didn't even speak Czech. When I tried to speak Czech with them, the first didn't even know Czech not even a bit and the second knew a little bit of Czech, but she was more comfortable in English. ...to be fair the first one was an Irish pub and the second some Turkish restaurant.
There is a huge expat community, almost everyone speaks English and IT jobs are open to everyone and will help you with visa and sometimes even relocation. I worked in a company with hundreds of foreigners, they all like it here.
Prague is a beautiful city and they were generally friendly to me and didn't mind speaking English. Some don't and sign language helped when I traveled. But they knew I was a tourist (I was a brown Indian guy who is not exactly the type there ;)). One thing I found surprising for being an European city is how hard it is to find any kind of food past 9 PM. Maybe I picked a neighborhood like that to stay? Also, stores didn't bother following any sort of schedule :). Overall,I'd love to live in Prague and experience more of what the city has to offer. And the train ride from Germany to Prague is so awesome!
Try finding a restaurant in the Netherlands past 9PM. Past 0100 it gets nigh impossible until the next morning 8-9am (6am if you only want a banana or cookie from a train station).
Prague and Brno would be the two options I'd consider seriously. Prague definitely has a larger English-speaking population, but Brno is not far behind and is generally cheaper. Prague is exceptionally beautiful, however, and so if you are only going for a few months it might be worth the cost (although travel from Brno to Prague is not terrible on the freeway).
It's worth learning as much Czech as you are able to, but you would be fine managing on your own for a few months, especially if you can befriend a local who can help you get on your feet when you arrive (tips on currency conversion, places to eat, places to avoid, setting up a transit pass, etc.)
Life in Prague if you're coming to visit is quite great. I love every minute of the almost two years I was able to spend there and around the Czech and Slovak republics.
Czechia is in general one of the safest european countries [1]. I am quiet european laptop carrying male (-foreign) and have ocassionally walked through deserted industrial areas/streets of Prague well after midnight and never felt significantly threatened.
Rowdy and drunk groups of tourists are the most unsettling thing that I occasionally encounter, so maybe it's better to avoid tourists areas instead?
We will see if they will attack him as it happened in Rome with a similar new major from outside (5 stelle). There was a huge disinfo campaign to discredit her.
Not only ANO is worried, also all the established parties have all incentives to throw dirt at him to keep the pirates out of more important political roles.
