Who actually won this year's European elections?
It can be said that the ANO movement has won, sending six of its MPs to Brussels. In principle, however, the governing coalition only won these six seats because its partner in government (the CSSD) has a net zero. The support of the Communists is worth one mandate in the case of the European Parliament elections. We can try to add the SPD's gain, at two MPs, but we are still only at nine. The ODS, Pirates, TOP 09 with STAN and KDU-ČSL will give a total of twelve MPs, four sevenths of the Czech quota (21). This is, of course, a grossly misleading way of comparing the strength of individual entities. A large and probably decisive role is played by the faction into which our MPs are incorporated, and this will only determine the value of the potential brilliance of their actions and procedures. Perhaps the more important question is whether the citizens succeeded in the EP elections, or whether populism and political marketing played an umpire role once again, guiding the hand of the voters in the necessary direction from a distance. Alarmingly, it would not have taken much for our interests to be defended by the notorious truncheon wielder Zdeněk Ondráček. This member of the Communist Party of Ukraine, formerly the Communist Party of the Czechoslovak Republic, made himself visible at the last minute by attending the celebration of the fifth anniversary of the proclamation of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. In the presence of Denis Pushilin, he patiently listened to the Czech national anthem and, thanks to nearly eleven thousand preferential votes, almost squeezed into a seat in the European Parliament. Although this did not happen in the end, I still do not feel that we, as citizens, won the European elections. Less than a third of people went to the polls, and this is a clear lack of interest in European affairs that has been going on in Czech society since 2004, when approximately the same number of voters turned out as now. It is true that there is at least one election every year in these years, and it is a bit tiresome. But if we want to play a worthy role in a Babylon of half a billion people, we need to send quality and carefully selected representatives.