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NY Times May 28, 2010 Communists Could Gain in Czech Vote By DAN BILEFSKY PRAGUE — A popular online video here called “Convince Granny” urges young Czechs to withhold visits to their grandparents unless the old folks agree not to vote for leftist parties like the Communists in Saturday’s elections. Modeled on the American comic Sarah Silverman’s video “The Great Schlep,” which in 2008 appealed to young Jewish voters to persuade their grandparents to support Barack Obama in the swing state of Florida, the Czech video is a testament to the Communist Party’s enduring influence here. The creators of “Convince Granny” say they conceived the video, which has had more than 600,000 hits since it was posted on YouTube about a month ago, as a necessary weapon against the ascent of the unreconstructed Communist Party, which recent polls indicate could win up to 15 percent of the vote. In addition to the jokes about Grandma’s selective memory, the video implores young viewers not to forget the insidious transgressions of the former Communist government, from the exile of the country’s leading intellectuals and artists to the execution of its political enemies. In an election that is unlikely to yield a majority for either the leftist Social Democrats or the rightist Civic Democrats, analysts say the Communist Party could come closer to real power than at any other time since the Velvet Revolution here overthrew Communism in 1989. “We hate the Communists,” said Marek Prchal, 35, an advertising executive who helped create the video. “The Communists should have been banned a long time ago.” Analysts say the Communist Party is benefiting from a regionwide disappointment over the failure of liberal parties to live up to the promises of 1989. “The theme across the region is the politics of disillusionment,” said Anna Matuskova, a political consultant here. “In the Czech Republic, there is a new generation of young people with iPhones who don’t remember Communism and will vote for them as a protest vote.” The Communist Party in this country remains the only one surviving in the former Eastern Bloc and, to its many critics, is a dangerous anachronism. The Communists still extol Lenin and Marx, and advocate the redistribution of wealth and the country’s disengagement from NATO, making the party a potential spoiler for good relations with the rest of Europe and the United States. Eager to keep the Communists out of power, the Social Democrats and Civic Democrats may come together in a grand coalition that could lead to gridlock, political experts here say. But it is also possible that a minority Social Democratic government could come to power dependent on the Communist Party’s tacit support. Several new political parties could also prove to be decisive in these elections: the recently created TOP 09, a fiscally conservative party led by Karel Schwarzenberg, a pipe-smoking prince and former foreign minister; and Public Matters, which has instituted patrols in Prague removing drug addicts and homeless people from the street. The Communists’ secret weapon is Katerina Konecna, the youngest member of the Czech Parliament, who at age 28 says she feels as at home wearing designer black stiletto heels as she does reading Das Kapital. The daughter of Communist Party members, Ms. Konecna says that the current crisis of capitalism has proved a boon to the Communist Party among the young, who were drawn by its promises of free education and guaranteed jobs. “People would rather queue up for bananas, than today, when they have to stand in the unemployment line,” she said. Yet the limits of the contemporary Communists’ appeal were all too apparent at a rally held Thursday in front of one of the capital’s largest shopping malls. Jana Kocianova, 18, a would-be Czech Britney Spears, gyrated and belted out Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” in Czech, as a group of 80-something men swayed to the beat, tapping their canes on the pavement. Speaking between sets, Ms. Kocianova commended the Communists’ social egalitarianism, even as she acknowledged that singing for them was problematic for her. “It’s not cool to be young and to support the Communist Party,” she lamented. But she quickly added, “I wasn’t alive during Communism, so I don’t really remember anything.” ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
