Final Word from Tuesday, September 24, 2024

The Pirates complain about the Czech oligarchy but without it would have never risen to power. Their let-us-at-them campaign in 2017 was their breakthrough. Their misjudgment of the strength of the Czech criminal elite is now their undoing. The Pirates made four egregious mistakes under Chair Ivan Bartoš. First, they failed to understand in time how STAN planned a hostile takeover of their seats in Parliament. Second, they failed to find a way to use the Dosimeter criminal case to deal STAN a death blow in return. Third, they underestimated the power of Zdeněk Zajíček and the IT lobby to make them look like complete IT amateurs. And fourth, they failed to use their window of opportunity to leave the government with their heads still held high. The Pirates went into high-level politics as rank amateurs who talked a good game, and they will leave as rank amateurs who, for better or for worse, never matured into the kind of cut-throats it takes to remain alive in hostile waters. [ Czech Republic ICT Let us at them oligarchs ]