
Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor - yread
http://praguemonitor.com/2018/10/26/pirate-zden%C4%9Bk-h%C5%99ib-be-prague-mayor
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jxub
Any Czech person around to chim in and shed some light on the implications?

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TomMarius
Yes, I'm Czech living in Prague. Last 4 years the Prague local government was
led by ANO, the party led by StB (communist secret police) member billionaire
Andrej Babis. Their campaign was extremely strong then and they won - today
Prague is in horrendous state, bridges are _literally_ falling down (2 more
just this week), traffic is worse (extremely worse!) than ever due to
idiotically planned long roadworks that have to be soon redone and zero
construction of much needed infrastructure, the public transport is way worse
than it was, taxi mafia is still the same, they caused a huge housing
bubble... And on top of that Krnacova calls Prague people who don't like it
"whiners", repeatedly and on purpose - she even recently confirmed that it's
exactly what she wanted to say.

The major implication for the whole country is that at least Prague citizens
are absolutely fed up with ANO - that is important because they dominated the
whole country politics for the last 2 periods. Today there are 2 other major
parties - ODS (Občansko-demokratická strana, Civic Democracy Party) and the
Pirate party. These are the three winners of the recent parliament vote -
parliament politics affect local politics a lot in the Czech Republic. If you
don't want to vote ANO then you vote ODS if you're more on the right (as in
free market) and the Pirate party if you're more on the left. There are
basically no other options - the remaining "major" (bigger than others but has
almost no influence) party in the country is a racist one. Other previously
major parties such as ČSSD (social democracy), KDU-ČSL (the Roman-Catholics)
and KSČM (literal communists) have fallen down significantly over last 2
periods, most probably because of their cooperation with ANO.

Pirates have a good track record as far as local politics go, but it's a
relatively new party and they only participated in smaller cities/villages so
far (on top of their recent entry to parliament). This person is completely
unknown. Let's see.

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saiya-jin
Basically the problem of whole east europe (although we like to call ourselves
central europe) - too much crap left over communist rule and twisted mentality
(ie everybody for themselves, screw the rest). Extremely rich individuals
openly influencing politics, laughing at the cameras and enjoying being in
spotlight.

Prague is a beautiful city to visit, be it for a weekend or a week. But living
there long term sucks - most of the Prague apart from historical centre is
properly fugly, as soviet-style architecture is still all over the place,
cramped high rise residential areas with high criminality, little nature
around (major mountains are > 500km away, sea even further), Czech love to
constantly complain and moan about almost everything (it really gets to you
after some time). Gap between rich (ie IT workers, managers) and rest of
population is big and widening, people constantly hate politics but vote an
a-hole after a-hole for last 20 years. So rich often discuss how to shield
themselves financially from the rest of country, politics and economy as much
as possible - not an indication of paradise. Half of the country is xenophobic
and/or racist (although ie Roma question is a complex one).

I've worked there for couple of years, to be successful in IT was trivial due
to constant lack of senior people, from what I heard its even worse now due to
massive off/near shoring of multinationals. When looking back, moving away was
one of the best decisions of my life and major step up in quality of life.

Of course there are positive aspects, just like everywhere. Professionals (I
can judge IT) are smart and work hard, beer is the best there is (for me) and
as mentioned its a great starting point for career. There are people who
consider it the best place for them. Interestingly, none I know in this
category lived abroad for longer to properly compare.

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foobarian
> Czech love to constantly complain and moan about almost everything

Funny, so do all ex-Yugoslavs, and I understand Russians do too. Could be some
kind of Slav thing. Or communist :-)

~~~
dirktheman
Trust me, when it comes to complaining about trivial things, you can't beat
the Dutch. They live in this incredibly well run country but still complain
about everything all the time. It's crazy. Oh, wait...

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fermigier
Who are the partners in his coalition ? Left ? Moderate or radicals ? Greens ?
Others ?

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TomMarius
Basically anyone because the point here is to get ANO out of the government.

No radicals though. They're moderate left, but they cooperate with parties on
the right as well. Greens in the Czech Republic are radical communists.

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rebolek
Greens in Czech Republic are no radical communists, only radical fascists call
them this way.

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Aoyagi
[https://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/na-namesti-republiky-se-
ko...](https://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/na-namesti-republiky-se-kona-
demonstrace-proti-kapitalismu/1551807)

Uhuh.

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drb91
At least they _have_ a proper left.... We could use a lot more of this in the
US.

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Scea91
Greens do not hold any political function AFAIK (edit: they still have a few
senators). In the past few elections they usually gained only around 3 % of
votes.

Our 'proper' left parties that have some power are those old-school leftist
parties that are pro-Russian. The irony is that they are usually quite fond of
Trump.

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drb91
Discourse is a political function.

And I sincerely wish our Green Party had ever gotten 3%.

I’m not sure what you consider left but I’d hazard a guess we disagree based
on your comment.

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Scea91
You do not consider Communist party to be left?

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yazr
How is life in Prague for English-only speakers who want to relocate for a few
months?

The city itself is so beautiful.

~~~
TomMarius
There is a huge expat community, almost everyone speaks English and IT jobs
are open to everyone and will help you with visa and sometimes even
relocation. I worked in a company with hundreds of foreigners, they all like
it here.

~~~
lnkmails
Prague is a beautiful city and they were generally friendly to me and didn't
mind speaking English. Some don't and sign language helped when I traveled.
But they knew I was a tourist (I was a brown Indian guy who is not exactly the
type there ;)). One thing I found surprising for being an European city is how
hard it is to find any kind of food past 9 PM. Maybe I picked a neighborhood
like that to stay? Also, stores didn't bother following any sort of schedule
:). Overall,I'd love to live in Prague and experience more of what the city
has to offer. And the train ride from Germany to Prague is so awesome!

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lucb1e
Try finding a restaurant in the Netherlands past 9PM. Past 0100 it gets nigh
impossible until the next morning 8-9am (6am if you only want a banana or
cookie from a train station).

I take it it's different in India?

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SEJeff
Really? This is a gross generalization, but in any large US city there are
places open 24/7 for the most part.

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midasz
Awesome. Good luck!

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martinwww
Good luck Zdeněk !

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rurban
We will see if they will attack him as it happened in Rome with a similar new
major from outside (5 stelle). There was a huge disinfo campaign to discredit
her.

Not only ANO is worried, also all the established parties have all incentives
to throw dirt at him to keep the pirates out of more important political
roles.

This is very exciting news.

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Scea91
Yes, I am afraid it will be constant backstabbing by his coalition partners.

