Fair enough: Markéta Pekarová Adamová is leaving politics. We won't easily get a Czech Angela Merkel
Markéta Pekarová Adamová (TOP 09), the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, came with quite a surprising news. She will not run in the next election and is also making her position as chairwoman of the TOP 09 government available. She is the only woman ever to have become the leader of a parliamentary party in an election. With her departure from politics, the spotlight is again falling on the Czech order of things, where female politicians in parties play only a secondary role.
First of all, it should be noted that before her, the primacy of the party's chairwoman was also held by Karolina Peake. She created the LIDEM party from the defectors of Public Affairs and spent part of the electoral term in the Chamber of Deputies as the party leader. However, she got into the parliamentary seat on the backs of other leaders and her political party soon ended up in the dustbin of history.
Markéta Pekarová Adamová got to the top of TOP 09 even before the elections (in office since 2019) with the knowledge that she would be the main face of the party in the upcoming elections. The COALITION SPOLU was created only afterwards, so to the electoral victory within it Pekarová Adamová came up in the wake of the coalition leader Petr Fiala (ODS).
Departure of Pekarová Adamová pushes TOP 09 into the role of an appendix
At that time, TOP 09 was already the second smallest party in the Chamber of Deputies, and a woman at its head certainly did not cause much fuss. The party was fighting for its parliamentary survival. TOP 09, however, was in 2013 the most successful right-wing party and it seemed that in this part of the political spectrum it would replace the declining ODS, which had ten fewer mandates in the then Chamber of Deputies.
However, in 2019, Pekarová Adamová took over a party that was being circled by the crows of political oblivion. The young politician at the helm, however, was unable to sprinkle the party with magic water even after entering government. Lately, TOP 09 represents the essence of intrapersonal emptiness of parties (applies to all of them to a T), which was fully confirmed by the party's problems with staffing one and a half ministerial posts that fell to them in Fial's government.
Health Minister Vlastimil Válek faces rather criticism than praise, and the ministry without a portfolio for science seemed to have been created as a bit of a superfluous seat for TOP 09, so that Válek would not be alone in government, however, the party filled the position with invisible, noname politicians.
Personal non-participation in the government is Pekarová Adamová's biggest political mistake. Let's put aside that the same health/personal reasons that led to her current withdrawal from politics probably prompted this step. The politician was indeed visible and definitely belonged to the most prominent faces of the government coalition. Let's not doubt that she would have played a much more visible role in the government than her colleagues even without a portfolio.
All is testified by the attention paid to her by the opposition and the media. In many respects negative, but in politics, negative advertising also counts as a well-tradable commodity. Who will take care of the invisible is a question. Anything is possible, but without Pekarová Adamová, TOP 09 took a big step towards the appendage of the SPOLU coalition. Attachments then have a tendency to be forgotten.
Pekarová Adamová has made it furthest in politics, but the Czech Merkel is nowhere in sight
At the same time, it applies that the above-mentioned short chapter from the history of Czech political parties is also one of the biggest stories of women politicians' careers in the Czech Republic in the 21st century. Although a number of women in the Czech Republic have held ministerial posts, none of them have ever reached the highest echelons of leadership figures, because none of them led a "major" party and the roles of party leaders are the most important.
Currently, we find striking female faces in non-governmental parties. Chairwoman Kateřina Konečná (KSČM) would like to bring the communists back to the Chamber of Deputies. Nobody can see into the future, but apart from a sharp tongue for 23 years (she was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2002) in high politics, Konečná has not shown much and the question has been asked for some time that she is more interested in a comfortable chair than in promoting a political program.
A chapter in itself is then Alena Schillerová, who was the Minister of Finance (ie, second to the Prime Minister) and at the same time is a triple leader of Ano along with Karel Havlíček and Andrej Babiš. However, apart from really creative video clips on social networks, it is no secret that she is just an extension of Babiš's hand and she does not have a greater influence on the politics of the party.
We probably won't see Czech incarnations of Angela Merkel or Margaret Thatcher anytime soon. In conservative Poland, they have had three female prime ministers since the 90s, Slovakia has had both a female prime minister and president, putting the Czech Republic on a par with Hungary in this regard. In some respects, Czech society with its conservatism can match the European elite.
Sources: author's text, commentary, Seznamzpravy.cz, volby.cz
