The foreign policy of future Czech President Petr Pavel will be unequivocally pro-Atlantic and pro-EU. He also said he was in favor of Ukraine joining NATO and the EU, PISM analyst Łukasz Ogrodnik told PAP.
On Saturday, the Czech News Agency (CzTK), after counting the votes from 100 percent. constituency election commissions, announced that Petr Pavel was the new Czech President. The former high-ranking commander of the Czech army and head of the NATO Military Committee obtained 58.32%. voice. 41.67% voted for Babisz. Pavel got almost a million more votes than his competitor. The participation rate was 70.25%.
Łukasz Ogrodnik, an analyst for the Central Europe program at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, when asked by the PAP about Pavel’s foreign policy, said the future president’s statements so far show he is “clearly pro-Atlantic , thus referring to the legacy of former Czech President Vaclav Havel”.
The analyst noted that he will also be pro-EU, as Pavel, unlike Babisz, is a supporter of eurozone membership, as well as the European Green Deal.
“Pavel also left no illusions and spoke unequivocally about Ukraine’s support in the war with Russia. He said that he was in favor of the country joining NATO and the European Union. European Union, which is also the way the Polish authorities see it, so it bodes well for bilateral relations with Poland” – he said.
Asked by journalists, Pavel spoke favorably about Poland and the future of bilateral relations, but – as Ogrodnik notes – it should be remembered that the powers of the Czech head of state are “quite limited”.
The PISM analyst noted that Pavel is a professional military man and in fact “we don’t know him as a politician, he’s a person from outside this world.” He added that he was a cross-party candidate who received support from most ruling coalition parties, prompting Babisz to try to cast him as a “candidate for power”.
“Pavel is a professional military man, which is what he has been focusing on for a few decades. Although he was also told about his past in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the 1980s, which he admitted. However, his competitor Babisz was also a member of the same party” – remarked the gardener.
Petr Pavel was born in 1961. He studied at an officers’ school and an intelligence course, where he served as the chairman of a cell of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. “I was born into a family where membership of the Communist Party was considered normal,” he said in one of his pre-election interviews. He left the party after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, remained in the army and made a career there, which accelerated after his participation in the UNPROFOR mission.
Lieutenant-Colonel Pavel, together with a group of military volunteers, led to the release of more than 50 French soldiers who could not leave the Serbian ground base. He attended British military courses for senior officers in Britain. In the years 2012-2015, he was Chief of the General Staff, then Head of the NATO Military Committee. In 2018, he finished his service in Brussels and retired with the rank of army general, which is the highest military rank in the Czech Republic.
The biggest controversies of the election campaign raised the question of his party affiliation and his participation in an intelligence course.
After all the votes have been counted on Monday, the election will be assessed by the National Electoral Commission.
The results are to be published Tuesday in the Official Journal. The future president will take office in March after being sworn in before the combined Houses of Parliament. (PORRIDGE)
by Adrian Kowarzyk
amk/ akub/
