It's a strange way to support AfD if Russia is trying to blow up airplanes and is engaging in other acts of sabotage across Germany in the days and weeks before the state elections on Sun. in Saxony-Anhalt. Vladimir Putin must think that his "attempts to destabilize, spread disinformation, threaten, sabotage and show aggression towards Europe," as German Foreign Min. Johann Wadephul referred to it on Tues., will be seen as German provocation or false flags by a significant portion of AfD's potential voters and will in fact boost the party at the polls. German officials apparently don't see it this way, otherwise they wouldn't have timed their announcements and articles about AfD to coincide with the elections. Could spymaster Putin understand the mentality in his old playground (East Germany) better than the experts in Berlin? If so, Czech PM Andrej Babiš, Foreign Min. Petr Macinka and Pres. Petr Pavel are playing right into Putin's hands by supporting their German colleagues so vocally.
While German Foreign Min. Johann Wadephul was announcing new measures yesterday against Russia in response to an armed drone at the Leipzig airport, including increased pressure on Russia's shadow fleet, and while Czech Foreign Min. Petr Macinka was preparing to summon the Russian ambassador in protest over the Leipzig event, the heads of member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) were meeting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Their declaration, which isn't yet available in English, shows the world in quite a different light. It devotes a paragraph to energy cooperation and to the SCO's commitment to the development of a "non-discriminatory global energy market." The West, as witnessed by Wadephul's statement yesterday and by Donald Trump's support for the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, wants anything but a non-discriminatory global energy market. Czechs and other Europeans will find out just what such a market is once they're excluded from it.
Neurologist Martin Jan Stránský wrote in MFD on Sat. that it's time to remove Donald Trump for his own good and ours. When the world's most powerful person has such a destructive neuropsychiatric profile, he said, there's too much at stake to ignore it. Stránský didn't mention Andrej Babiš this time, but he wrote in 2023 that Babiš is completely unbalanced and meets the definition of a clinical psychopath. Editor-in-chief Petr Šabata of Právo wrote on July 24 that if Babiš decides to run for president again, it will mean he's lost his sense of judgment more than at any other time in his political career. Petr Honzejk of HN said that there's clearly something going on with Babiš, because he's starting to lose his way on key issues. ANO isn't a normal party that could give Babiš feedback and replace him, Honzejk said, so we can only wait for him to recognize when it's time for him to leave. Maybe not. Petr Kolář, a consultant to Pres. Petr Pavel, told Seznam Zprávy (26:25) that Babiš might not realize that Art. 62 of the Constitution about appointing and removing the PM and ministers doesn't require a co-signature. Babiš needs to start toning things down, Kolář said.
STAN's latest effort to take votes from ANO, as announced in recent weeks by Chair Vít Rakušan and other party members, is bearing fruit, according to the new Kantar poll for Czech TV. ANO has lost four percentage points since the elections, Czech TV said, and the biggest slice of this has gone to STAN. Not mentioned by Czech TV (other than in its graph) is that a full 9.0% of respondents chose a party this time that didn't get the 2% of the vote necessary to be identified individually in the poll. That is up from 7.5% in June. This means that "other" rose in the Kantar poll just as fast as STAN and is now in fourth place. Among the parties below the 2% threshold and included in "other" are the Greens, KSČM, PRO, Přísaha, SocDem, Svobodní and Trikolora. Czech TV and Kantar are doing the public a disservice by not breaking out the numbers for these parties. What ends up happening to their votes is ultimately more important than whether ANO or STAN loses or gains a few percentage points.
