Václav Klaus

Václav Klaus (born 19 June 1941) is the second President of the Czech Republic and a former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. He is indisputably one of the most important Czech politicians of the recent era, although controversial.

Klaus was born in Prague and graduated from the Prague School of Economics in 1963; he also spent some time at universities in Italy (1966) and the United States (1969). He pursued postgraduate scientific career in the Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, which he left (reportedly was forced to for political reasons) to Czechoslovak State Bank in 1970; he joined the perestroika-minded Prognostics Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1987. In 1995 he achieved the degree of Professor of Finance at the Prague School of Economics. He is married to Livia Klausová, an economist, and has two sons.

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

In June 1992, ODS won the elections in the Czech Republic with a reform program, however the winner in Slovakia was Vladimir Meciar's nationalistic HZDS. It soon became apparent that Slovak demands of increased sovereignty are incompatible with Czech idea of limits of "viable federation"; both leaders assumed premiership in their respective national republics and quickly agreed on smooth division of Czechoslovakia under a temporary caretaker federal government.

Klaus remained in his post as the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic after the election of 1996, although ODS's win was much narrower and his government was plagued by increasing instability and economic problems, until he had to resign in autumn 1997 after a government crisis caused by a scandal with ODS funding.

Václav Klaus is a prominent member of the Mont Pelerin Society. His enthusiasm for the free market economy as exemplified by Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and practised by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush was well known and often also criticised. Others agree with his free-market concepts, but point out he neglected the importance of law and enforcement of property rights.

ODS lost the parliamentary elections in 1998 and Milos Zeman, chairman of Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD), succeeded Klaus as the prime minister, even though his minority government had to be supported by an "opposition agreement" with ODS and personally Klaus, who became the chairman of the Parliament.

ODS was defeated even in the elections of June 2002; after long equivocation, Klaus resigned from chairmanship in the autumn and was unanimously elected the honorary chairman.

After more than 5 years spent in opposition, Klaus was elected President of the Czech Republic by joint session of both chambers of the Parliament on 28th February, 2003; he succeeded Václav Havel, who has been one of his greatest political opponents since the division of Czechoslovakia. This result was surprising for many: the president was elected by the merest majority of 142 votes out of 281 only after two failed elections; the governing coalition, buffeted especially by feuds within CSSD, was unable to agree on a common candidate. Klaus achieved the quorum only due to the votes of most Communists (whose parliament club he visited before the election and whose shunning from political meetings, practised by Havel, he ended), apparently also a faction within CSSD unsatisfied with the Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla and reportedly even a few right-leaning members of KDU-CSL.

Václav Klaus still has many objectors and his alleged arrogance is the least among their criticism - they depict him as a narrow-minded pragmatist interested only in technology of power and text-book economy precepts. Beside faults of his governments, the most frequent contented issues are his relation to communism, both in the country's past and the strengthening political party today (he's published articles praising "the grey zone" of majority of ordinary people and condemning dissidents like Havel for haughtiness; in another article he declared himself a "non-communist" but not anticommunist, which he rejects as a cheap and superficial posturing), his Euro-phobic pronouncements which often border with pandering to the public's nationalist instincts, and general desire to be liked at the expense of a longer-term, more demanding agenda. On the other hand, his backers claim that among Czech politicians of the last decade, Klaus is one of the few, if not the only one with intellectual capacity and dedication necessary for true statesman's greatness.

Klaus's popularity in public opinion polls grew rapidly in the first half of 2003, presumably because of his disagreement with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, loudly voiced scepticism on the process of European integration, refusals to grant amnesties, and sometimes populist rhetoric.

Václav Klaus is also a writer (he wrote a book about his first year of presidency, Year One.)

He was the first to break the Stanley Cup tradition that the only one who can hold the Stanley Cup is a hockey player who won it, as he was able to hold it on 26th July 2004, when a couple of Czech hockey players brought it to him at the Prague Castle.

External links

• Official personal pages
• Biography and selected speeches at the President's office