Choose your dictator

Senator Petr Pithart told Právo that Czech presidents routinely overstep their constitutional authority and get away with it. This is why he fears electing a president by popular vote. The person would have a stronger mandate than now, he said, so what if times got really bad, and the president turned out to be a lunatic or a dictator? The real power to limit personal freedoms in a state of emergency rests with the cabinet and the Parliament, but Pithart is right that the president could indeed use the means at his or her disposal to override or supplement this. Much might depend on who the president was and whose interests he or she represented. Miroslava Němcová, for example, might be a surrogate for Václav Klaus. Jan Švejnar has links to the U.S. and to banking. Jan Fischer derives support from the London banking community. Footloose Tomio Okamura might actually be the president we should fear the least.