Death of the anti-Klaus

Jan Švejnar entered the presidential campaign not wanting to be the "anti-Klaus" candidate but eventually turned into one. In his speeches and media appearances, he increasingly positioned himself as being the good and Václav Klaus the bad, going so far as indirectly to compare Klaus to a dictator. Klaus drew him into this by defining the rules of the campaign and then playing the game like no one else can. Švejnar could have saved himself by gracefully accepting defeat, but his post-election interviews have continued in the same vein. ODS suffers from a cult of personality, he told MFD, for example. In contrast, Jiří Paroubek targets the Topolánek-Dalík group as the main evil and says that, in comparison, Klaus is a very decent person. Paroubek has apparently understood what Švejnar has not: With Klaus still in control, there's room in Czech politics for a non-Klaus, but not for an anti-Klaus. [Czech Republic MF Dnes Mirek Marek Stalin]