Narcotic Fields - Colorize (TV live)

Oops, the government’s fallen. Hey ho.

What’s the big deal anyway? True, it’s spiced up somewhat by coming right in the middle of the Czech Republic’s presidency of the EU, but the cynical, self-flagellating majority in this country would merely roll their eyes, shrug their shoulders and perhaps with a slightly smug glint in their eye tell you that it just proves what they’ve known all along: compelling evidence of this country’s capacity for embarrassing itself.

In fact, although it’s the first time in the short history of the Czech Republic as an independent country that a government’s lost a vote of confidence, it almost feels like a return to a normal state of affairs. It took six months to form a government after the last general election in this country due to parliamentary deadlock, and when this eventually happened the fledgling administration had to limp by on a wafer-thin majority, inevitably dependent on defectors whose loyalty was secured on the basis of shaky, bitterly disputed and quite possibly morally questionable deals.

All that was needed was for a gentle rock of the boat or a stroke of bad luck to bring the whole edifice crashing down, and so it actually seems fairly impressive that they managed to hold out for so long. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were even a few sighs of exhausted relief from within the government. Now it will be back to square one: attempts to form a government involving more shady deals, if these fail then early elections, quite probably followed by more frantic attempts to form yet another lame duck government.

Strangely I’m not amongst those rejoicing in the chaos and schadenfreude and bidding good riddance to bad rubbish. Strangely, because I’ve never been a fan of right wing governments, and even in my own country, let alone here, particularly in the days when capitalism was still relatively youthful and communism a fresh and painful wound, I’ve often been regarded as a screaming leftie. Still, recently I’ve taken quite a shine to just-deposed PM Mirek Topolánek. He might be a bit crude, but he manages to do it in a fairly affable and blokeish way. He’s been a bit of a lad, bagging off with one of his MPs and getting her pregnant, much to the dismay of his domineering old bag of a wife, he’s hurled some choice abuse at gutter journalists, and he even briefly entertained us by growing a small but unmistakeable mullet. Most importantly, he’s vastly preferable to all the available alternatives conspiring against him, and though he may have seen off the challenge from mayor of Prague and presidential arse-licker Pavel Bém, he still has to deal with the prince of darkness himself.

There’s clearly no love lost between Topolánek and his predecessor as party leader Klaus, who has now left the party in order to have even more freedom to make a cunt of himself. The president’s latest coup has been to attend the Social Democrat party conference to hold discussions with their party leader, future presidential hopeful, rapaciously ambitious demagogue and fat ugly bastard Jiří Paroubek. These two men may be from opposite sides of the political spectrum but neither is shy about using support from murdering commie shits to further their own interests, and whilst they may be low on principle they score high on conviction, the most important conviction of all being “I AM GOD”. The parallel with Thatcher’s endorsement of Blair (whilst knifing Major) is positively eerie, though obviously no surprise, since Klaus seems intent on shadowing her every move on his own personal descent into madness.

Mirek, you may be a twat, but some of us here will miss you. In fact we may yet beg you to save us. We live in strange and disturbing times.