Václav Klaus

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Václav Klaus
2nd President of the Czech Republic
Incumbent
Assumed office  2003
Preceded by	Václav Havel
Succeeded by	Incumbent
Born	June 19, 1941 Prague, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Spouse	Livia Klausová

Václav Klaus (IPA: [ˈva:ʦlaf ˈklau̯s]; born 19 June 1941, Prague) is the second President of the Czech Republic and a former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic (1992-7). This free market oriented economist is generally ranked among the most important Czech politicians since the fall of the communists.

Contents 1 Personal life 2 Rise to Prime Ministership, and Resignation 3 Presidency 4 External links

[edit] Personal life

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). During the Prague Spring he published articles on economics in the pro-reform, non-communist magazine Tvář (The Face). He then pursued a postgraduate academic career at the (state) Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, which he left (he says, being forced out for political reasons) for the Czechoslovak State Bank in 1970; Klaus then joined the 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 and is thus often called "Mr Professor" by his admirers. Klaus was teaching a full economics course as recently as in Fall 2005, while being a president.

Václav Klaus is married to Livia Klausová, an economist born in Slovakia. They have two sons, Václav (a private secondary school headmaster) and Jan (economist), and five grandchildren.

In youth, Klaus used to play basketball; he still is an avid tennis player and skier. His athletic inclinations contrast with those of his predecessor: Václav Havel has been a heavy smoker who avoided sports.

Since 1990, Václav Klaus has received nearly 50 honorary doctorates and published over 20 books on various social, political, and economics subjects, generally collections of articles and speeches; the most recent of these are three yearbooks of his presidential activities. Václav Klaus is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He has published articles in the free market-oriented Cato Journal and elsewhere.

[edit] Rise to Prime Ministership, and Resignation

Václav Klaus entered politics soon after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. As a member (and since October 1990, chairman) of Civic Forum he became the federal Minister of Finance. In April 1991 Klaus co-founded Civic Democratic Party (Občanská demokratická strana, ODS), the strongest and most right-wing of the post-Civic Forum splinter parties. He remained its chairman until the autumn of 2002.

His vocal enthusiasm for the free market economy as exemplified by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and practised by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, together with his stated belief in the Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand", soon became well-known (and also praised or criticised) and Klaus became a natural father of the Czechoslovak economic transformation. Others agreed with his free-market concepts, but pointed out that during his premiership he neglected the importance of law (in particular battling corruption), largely ignored the enforcement of property rights on stock market, and that his pet project, the voucher privatization, was poorly executed and didn't bring the economy responsible owners it needed. However, the companies privatized by this method were largely the least competitive ones that no investors wanted to buy and miracles shouldn't have been expected.

In June 1992, ODS won the elections in the Czech Republic with a reform program; its partner in Slovakia for post-election debates was Vladimír Mečiar's nationalistic Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, a party with a rather different ideology. Moreover, it soon became apparent that Slovak demands for increased sovereignty were incompatible with the limited "viable federation" supported by the Czechs (most vehemently by then-president Vaclav Havel); both leaders assumed the premiership in their respective polities and quickly agreed, without a referendum, on a smooth division of Czechoslovakia and its assets under a caretaker federal government i.e. the so-called Velvet Divorce.

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 instability, mild economic problems, and accusations of corruption. He decided to resign in the autumn of 1997 after a government crisis caused by an ODS funding scandal, an event later called "Sarajevo Assassination" (sarajevský atentát) by his sympathisers, in analogy with the assassination in Sarajevo that has started the First World War, because the calls for him to resign occurred during his visit of Sarajevo at that time. The accusations that led to his resignation later turned out to be unjustified.

Czech President Václav Havel publicly referred to Klaus' economic policies as "gangster capitalism" and blamed the prime minister for perceived corruption surrounding his policy of voucher privatization and his côterie of close allies such as the dentist, politician, and entrepreneur Miroslav Macek or StB honcho Václav Junek. Havel incidentally profited from the sale of his restituted properties, including a ballroom in downtown Prague, thereby establishing him as one of the major profiteers of the new gangster capitalism which he had decried.

ODS lost the parliamentary election in 1998 and Miloš Zeman, chairman of the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD), succeeded Klaus as prime minister. The two traditional foes from the TV screens signed an "opposition agreement" (opoziční smlouva) and so Zeman's minority government was supported by ODS: Klaus became the chairman of the lower house of the Parliament, while Zeman's 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 a unanimous vote.

[edit] Presidency

In 2003, Klaus became the second president of the Czech Republic, recently enjoying approval ratings between 70 and 82%.

Having lost two general elections 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 by secret ballot in 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.

Klaus was elected after two failed rounds of voting earlier in the month, only in the third turn of the election when both chambers vote on two top candidates jointly. He won with a narrow 142 votes out of 281 with the support of deputies from all political parties including the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia whose parliament club Klaus visited before the election. He was aided in this by the governing coalition which, buffeted especially by feuds within ČSSD, was unable to agree on a common candidate to oppose him; apparently also a faction within ČSSD unsatisfied with the Prime Minister Vladimír Špidla and reportedly even a few right-leaning members of Christian and Democratic Union - Czechoslovak People's Party voted for Klaus.

Unlike Havel, who was a self-described anti-communist, Klaus considers himself to be a "non-communist" but not an anticommunist, a label he rejects as a cheap and superficial posturing although he has warned against the traditional 'red scare' during two election campaigns against ČSSD. As a president representing the whole nation, he invites representatives of all parties including the communists, who were not allowed to enter the Prague Castle throughout the 13 years of Havel's presidency. Nevertheless, in 2005 and 2006 Klaus repeatedly stated that he would refuse to appoint a cabinet which depended on communist support either directly or indirectly.

Although many of his former foes, including the social-democratic leader Miloš Zeman, have recently become to respect Klaus, he has vocal opponents. Some of them consider him arrogant, others depict him as a narrow-minded pragmatist interested in lecturing about the technology of power and textbook economic precepts while practicing policies and approaches that are contradictory but materially convenient to his friends. As mentioned earlier, one of the contested issues is his relation to communism, both in the past and as a strong modern-day political party: Klaus has published articles praising "the grey zone" of the majority of ordinary people who passively endured the regime, while downplaying the importance of the small minority of dissidents like Havel because of their "haughtiness".

Klaus is often considered to be a Eurosceptic although he prefers the term "eurorealist". Klaus' Euroscepticism - apart from his libertarian attitude to economics - is a defining policy position of his presidency, and he includes criticisms of the "democratic deficit" and "centralization" of EU in many public statements. Some European hosts viewed his statements as insulting and beyond proper diplomatic behavior - Latvia and Finland being two examples of this. He claimed that accession to the Union represented a significant reduction of Czech sovereignty and he chose not to give any recommendation before the 2003 accession referendum (77% voted yes).

Klaus became one of the most outspoken Eurosceptics writing many articles and giving many speeches against what he views as the illiberal tendencies of the EU. He assisted in the publication of a Czech translation of a work by the Irish Eurosceptic Anthony Coughlan whose personal political career includes extreme left alignments and a record of campaigning against most of EU treaties. 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". Klaus is occasionally chastised by journalists who want Klaus to admit that the EU should be more than a free trade zone. Although he sometimes concedes to this, his skepticism about the internal mechanisms of the EU cannot be hidden. For example, in 2005 he informed a group of visiting U.S. politicians that the EU was a "failed and bankrupt entity".

He has reversed Havel's policy of avoiding many countries like China. His first major visit was to Russia and in 2006 he hosted Vladimir Putin in a style which was described by some pundits as borderline-sycophancy including using Russian language to converse with him: Klaus speaks many languages and is not ashamed for his skills. Klaus has tried to avoid conflicts with Russia and to maintain friendly relationships with the former ally. He disagrees with some of the sharp criticisms of the recent developments in Russia, claiming that the situation is better than expected from a country with minimal democratic traditions.

Klaus's popularity in public opinion polls grew rapidly in the first half of 2003, supported by mostly positive coverage from the country's largest newspapers and by his desire to be the president of the whole nation, and remained between 70% and 82% ever since. This public support contrasts with an unpopular government.

Klaus is a global warming skeptic who considers the warnings about anthropogenic global warming to be a fatal mistake of the present era. "Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so."[1] He has also criticized the IPCC climate panel as a group of politicized scientists with one-sided opinions and one-sided assignments. He has said that other top-level politicians do not expose their doubts about global warming because "a whip of political correctness strangles their voices." [2] In addition he says "Environmentalism should belong in the social sciences" along with other "isms" such as communism, feminism, and liberalism. President Klaus said that "environmentalism is a religion" and, in an answer to the questions of the U.S. Congressmen, a "modern counterpart of communism" that seeks to change peoples' habits and economic systems.[3]

Although Klaus used to criticize Havel for having used his power to veto the laws, he does so at least as frequently as Havel, usually with the goal to avoid introduction of new regulations he considers unnecessary or illiberal. Among the vetoed bills was also the registered partnership act; Klaus thinks that the special laws helping the families were designed with a specific goal that can't apply to gays which makes the law unjustified. However, his veto of this particular bill was overturned by the Parliament in March 2006, and the Czech Republic became the first post-communist country to grant legal recognition to same-sex partnerships.

[edit] External links

• Official personal pages – English section
• Biography and selected speeches at the President's office
• Klaus in an interview on Global Warming with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily
• (Czech) Wikiquotes

Preceded by Petr Pithart	Prime Minister of the Czech Republic 1992–1997	Succeeded by Josef Tošovský
Preceded by Václav Havel	President of the Czech Republic 2003–present	Succeeded by Incumbent

Presidents of the Czech Republic
Václav Havel 1993–2003 • Václav Klaus 2003–

Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic

Czech Socialist Republic / Czech Republic (as part of Czechoslovakia): Stanislav Rázl (1969) • Josef Kempný (1969-1970) • Josef Korčák (1970-1987) • Ladislav Adamec (1987-1988) • František Pitra (1988-1990) • Petr Pithart (1990-1992) • Václav Klaus (1992) Czech Republic: Václav Klaus (1993-1997) • Josef Tošovský (1997-1998) • Miloš Zeman (1998-2002) • Vladimír Špidla (2002-2004) • Stanislav Gross (2004-2005) • Jiří Paroubek (2005-2006) • Mirek Topolánek (2006-present)