You haven’t performed anywhere for a long time, you haven’t given interviews, you haven’t even been ambassador to Israel for over a year, so the question arises, what are you actually doing?
I’m doing everything I didn’t have time for almost my whole life. I am catching up on debts, whether it is necessary in a number of cases of paternity, but also a healthier way of life, I do a lot of sports. I hardly ever go to Prague, because I find Prague full of tension, whereas a few tens of kilometers outside of Prague, my life is better and I can be more in nature, which is a wonderful thing.
I’m already thinking about it. I’m thinking about writing a play…
Martin Stropnický: Israel’s steps cannot be evaluated from a European humanistic point of view
PoliTalk
Do you already have something written out?
I have it written down, it’s a tragicomedy and I’ll see. But now I got quite an interesting offer for purely acting work in a detective story.
One should know when it is necessary to come to terms with the fact that one may not completely save the world and that one has to leave it to someone else.
However, as recently as last July, you confirmed to Seznam Zprávám that you would be interested in the post of consul general in Turkey. So you still wanted to continue as a diplomat? How is it today, is it already a closed chapter?
When the end of my mission in Israel was approaching, I thought about it. I applied for tenders for example in Brussels, Istanbul, but also Milan. Well, from the point of view of the leadership of the ministry, it was not assessed positively. I understood that the current management is not exactly the boss of my fan club.
Did you connect it with the fact that the resort no longer leads the ANO movement?
No, I didn’t need any minister from the ANO movement to speak for me. I was Václav Havel’s ambassador three times, Miloš Zeman’s once. And there are not quite a bunch of diplomats who have been ambassadors four times and who have some experience and know languages. But they simply decided differently.
Well, I never received a reply to the letter I wrote to the minister. I never got the chance to meet face-to-face or have a coffee together…
But when we talked about the fact that you did not give interviews, that you withdrew from public life. Why? What was the main reason?
I mainly received questions about the situation in the Middle East and Israel. And the more you know about the issue, the less you want to get into quick chats and SMS replies. Because it’s terribly complicated and superficiality really bothers me. From the beginning, most of our media referred to the parties of the Hamas movement as radicals. This is really weak coffee, because it is simply a terrorist movement, just like Hezbollah. It is also internationally recognized.
Until now, you worked as a diplomat, you were also a top politician, you are an actor – in which role do you actually feel most comfortable?
The closest role to me is one that can’t even be called one of those professions, but maybe a person who somehow went through all that. And I’m not saying with what success. But I always set myself some obstacles and high goals and had to learn new things. I enjoyed that, but I think that canister of energy is already behind me. And one should know when one needs to come to terms with the fact that one simply cannot completely save the world and that one has to leave it to someone else. And it’s quite important to be able to say to yourself: “I tried, and now someone else has.”
That sentence about our children may seem naive to some. Certainly. But it wasn’t a hoax. This was not some internal fraud.
However, as a former top politician, how do you perceive the current government crisis?
I don’t have to observe it in such detail anymore, for God’s sake.
But you certainly have an opinion on what is happening and where we are heading in Czech politics. Do you think that we are heading towards the government of the ANO movement again?
Everything points to it. The numbers speak relatively clearly. I am a little sorry as a citizen that the current government, even though it is one of the most pro-European and emphasizing our belonging to the Western civilization area, has squandered its popularity through its own fault. Well, the ANO movement knows how to use this space quite pragmatically and it does so with success.
You joined ANO in 2013, i.e. two years after the founding of the party. You were his main face for a long time. People will probably remember the spots with Andrej Babiš, where you are sitting on a bench on the playground, for example. And your sentence: “Let’s make such a change so that all people’s eyes shine and our children want to live here” may have become popular then. However, how do you think it turned out with those glowing eyes?
Of course, these are the initiatives of various political marketers, and I had comments about it, which, of course, did not fall on fertile ground. That was the first small warning. But I wouldn’t mock it like that. It is necessary to know what happened in 2013. The absolute Kocourkov, when a certain specific lady influenced to a large extent who gets to be the prime minister, and I already thought to myself, that’s too much and I should do something too.
And you know, if today someone is full of sarcasm, what fools we all were, then at that time there were roughly thirty percent of people who had an unquestionably successful professional career behind them. And they were rectors, deans, doctors, businessmen, engineers, journalists. And Věra Jourová approached me, so I met with Andrej Babiš and simply joined the movement. At that time, many things were also unknown, about some cases and the like. And that sentence about our children may seem naive to some. Certainly. But it wasn’t a hoax, it wasn’t some internal fraud.
What is your relationship with Andrej Babiš, with the ANO movement today?
Of course it has changed. Probably as all or most people feel and see that the original thirty percent (people successful in their professions – editor’s note)which I talked about, became significantly thinner. I didn’t want to slam the door, I thought it was cheap…
I would advise every young man to think the hell out of having the ambition to be a minister… It’s a truly devastating profession.