Jiří Paroubek

Jiří Paroubek (2013)

Jiří Paroubek ^{? / i} [ ˈjir̝iː ˈparoubɛk ] (born August 21, 1952inOlomouc) is aCzechpolitician. He wasPrime Minister ofhis countryfrom 2005 to 2006and chairman of the social democratic partyČSSDfrom 2006 to 2010. 2011–2015 he was chairman of the People's Socialists - Left of the 21st Century, which he founded.

Life

After graduating from the University of Economics in Prague in 1976, he held a managerial position in several companies as a business economist. From 1991 he worked as an independent management consultant for small and medium-sized companies. Since 1993 he has been editor of the social democratic oriented Czech magazine Trend .

Paroubek has a son (* 1984) and speaks German and English. In July 2007 Paroubek announced the divorce from his wife Zuzana. A short time later he married the interpreter Petra Kováčová.

politics

From 1970 to 1986 Paroubek was a member of the Czechoslovak Socialist Party , a bloc party belonging to the National Front and thus a forerunner of the People's Socialists . Paroubek held various functions in this party. In November 1989 he joined the re-established Social Democratic Party and was elected its central secretary in 1990. He gave up this post the following year when he went into business for himself. In 1993 he ran unsuccessfully against Miloš Zeman for the party chairmanship of the ČSSD. In November 1998 he became Deputy Mayor of Prague and also City Councilor for Finance. In July 2004, he became Minister for the Regions in Stanislav Gross’s cabinet .

After Stanislav Gross 'resignation from the post of Prime Minister after only a few months due to a real estate affair on April 25, 2005, President Václav appointed Klaus Paroubek as his successor and he restored the coalition government between the Social Democrats, the KDU-ČSL and the US , which had broken up immediately before Gross' resignation -DEU . On May 13, 2006 he was elected chairman of the social democratic party ČSSD as Gross' successor.

In the elections to the House of Representatives in June 2006, the ČSSD achieved an unexpectedly good result despite the previous affairs with Paroubek as the top candidate and was even able to easily gain votes, but overall it had to be satisfied with second place behind the ODS and no longer had a majority for that previous government alliance. Paroubek speculated that the communist KSČM would tolerate the continuation of the Social Democratic government together with the KDU-ČSL . However, since they refused to cooperate with the communists, this option was lost. Due to a political stalemate between the right and left in parliament, only cooperation between the Social Democrats and the ODS under its chairman Mirek Topolánek could have ensured a stable political majority. The new Prime Minister Topolánek, appointed by President Klaus in September 2006 to succeed Paroubek, therefore also speculated on the conclusion of an opposition treaty with the Social Democrats. However, he could not find approval for this project from Paroubek and therefore fell through the vote of confidence in parliament. It was not until the beginning of 2007 that Mirek Topolánek succeeded in forming a minority government with the KDU-ČSL and the SZ thanks to the resignation of two members of the ČSSD parliamentary group , which was based on these non-attached members in parliament. Paroubek now finally had to be satisfied with the office of opposition leader. After several attempts, the ČSSD managed to overthrow the government of its adversary in March 2009 by means of a motion of no confidence, since two SZ MPs because of the government's approval of the US missile shield and some MPs close to the EU-skeptical President Václav Klaus because of the ODS had given up their allegiance to Topolánek's approval of the Lisbon Treaty and voted against Topolánek in the motion of no confidence initiated by Paroubek . The Czech Republic was then ruled by an independent government of experts under Jan Fischer , which in parliament relied on both the ČSSD and the camp of the previous government. This government of experts should actually only hold office until early elections in October 2009, but these early new elections were canceled by the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic as incompatible with the constitution, so that the Fischer government ultimately until the regular election date on 28/29. May had to officiate.

Before the parliamentary elections in 2010 , the ČSSD, under Paroubek's leadership, confidently led all the polls - especially since the ODS replaced Mirek Topolánek with Petr Nečas as the top candidate at short notice . On the evening of the election the Social Democrats were again the strongest political force, but compared to the last parliamentary elections they had lost more than 10% of the vote and there was a clear majority of the right-wing parties. She therefore had no real power option. Paroubek therefore resigned from the party's chairmanship on the evening of the election and was now just a simple MP. On October 7, 2011 Paroubek resigned from the ČSSD, taking his mandate with him, at the same time he announced his re-entry to a small left-wing party called the " Czech National Social Party " (ČSNS), which took on its current name after Paroubek left and Paroubek elected its chairman. Today this party represents social democratic and socialist positions and advocates higher taxation for higher earners and the introduction of the euro, among other things. After the party was not successful in either the 2013 parliamentary elections or the 2014 European elections , Paroubek withdrew from the party chairmanship in 2015.

criticism

Election event in Prague: Party leader Paroubek was pelted with several hundred eggs

Jiří Paroubek came under fire for defending the controversial action taken by the police against visitors to the CzechTek Festival 2005, claiming that the measures were necessary to “counter a wave of violence provoked by drugs and alcohol” and “against the spread of AIDS, jaundice and salmonella ”. He also claimed that the visitors to this festival were "not dancing children, but dangerously obsessed people with anarchist tendencies." This is "politically, sociologically as well as police and intelligence service perfectly documented".

His behavior when the Topolánek government was overthrown has also been criticized by the Czech public. This fall happened during the Czech EU Council Presidency and therefore played into the hands of the EU-skeptical President Václav Klaus , to whom Topolánek's approval of the Lisbon Treaty did not promise. Paroubek was accused of having pursued his personal power interests too ruthlessly and without taking into account the interests of the republic and the EU. Because thanks to the fall, at the height of the global economic crisis, not only was the Czech Republic without a functioning government, the Czech Republic was also considered as embarrassed as possible at the EU level because of this fall.

The declining popularity of Paroubek, especially among the young population, led to protests with a series of egg-throwing at Paroubek and other top officials of the ČSSD as part of campaign events for the 2009 European elections . Last but not least, Paroubek's low popularity among young voters was the reason for the relatively poor performance of the ČSSD in the 2010 parliamentary elections, as a result of which he resigned from the party leadership.

Awards

• Wenzel Jaksch Prize 2007
• Red buck 2008

Web links

Commons : Jiří Paroubek  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Paroubeks Neue: Former premier founds left-wing party radio.cz, October 10, 2011
2. ↑ Czech PM defends rave crackdown BBC News, August 2, 2005
3. ↑ Na Paroubka se snesly stovky vajec aktualne.cz, May 28th 2009