Czech presidential candidate Petr Pavel for ROMEA TV: Extremism should be displaced from public life
In an interview first published in Czech on 9 January, presidential candidate Petr Pavel said he has never harbored any prejudices against people of other faiths or nationalities. That is one reason Romani voters should choose him, in his view.
The main motto of Pavel’s election campaign has been restoring calm to the Czech Republic. ROMEA TV reporter Richard Samko asked him about why he visited the Chanov housing estate and in what context he has used the word “inadaptables“.
Pavel is a graduate of the Military College for Ground Forces in Vyškov, Czechoslovakia and completed his postgraduate studies at the Brno Military Academy; after the 1989 Velvet Revolution he finished a course for senior officers at the Staff College in Camberley in the UK, a general staff course at the British Royal Academy of Defence Studies, and a course in international relations at King’s College London. From 1991 to 1999 he worked for Czechoslovak and then Czech military intelligence, passed through a number of command positions, and worked in military diplomacy; he was also on the UNPROFOR mission in Croatia.
From July 2012 to April 2015, Pavel was the Chief of the General Staff of the Army of the Czech Republic. Between 2015 and 2018, he was appointed chairman of the NATO Military Committee.
Pavel retired from the military in 2018. The main motto of his election campaign is restoring calm to the Czech Republic.
“Polls confirm that 80 % of people here are aware of chaos and uncertainty. They are concerned about many different things and naturally, if people are living in turmoil, anticipating bad things, and are unable to name them or visualize them, then naturally they seek the opposite of that, which is calm,” Pavel said in his interview for ROMEA TV.
“We want a situation in which things work here, in which people are able to rely on the law, in which they can rely on politicians, in which they can rely on functioning institutions, because that’s where the calm will come from,” Pavel said. He said Romani people should vote for him because he has no prejudices.
“I’ve never had any prejudices, and not just about people’s ethnicity, or what state they come from or what faith they have. I do my best to treat everybody equally, and given that I’ve had the opportunity to spend many years of my life abroad, in Muslim countries, in Africa, then I actually perceive people a bit differently from the way we frequently hear people in our country perceiving them,” Pavel said.
During the interview he also discussed his use of the word “inadaptable“. “I’ve always used that term irrespective of what somebody’s ethnicity is – for me, an inadaptable person is somebody who doesn’t respect the rules,” he explained.
Pavel also visited the Chanov housing estate in Most at the invitation of local Romani residents as part of his campaign. “The visit to Chanov made a big impression on me, because it’s there that the prejudices are being dismantled. The vast majority of people who have never gone there have an image of it that is 20 or 25 years old and have no idea what life is like there now,” he said, adding that it is very important to communicate directly with people and get to know the problems where they are.
In Pavel’s view, demonstrations of good examples are important to improving mutual coexistence. “Good examples are not being popularized in general, this doesn’t just apply to Romani people by far. Politicians are the main people who should do this. They should lift up good examples, make people aware of them, and gradually break down the fear, the concerns and the stereotypes,” he said.
Pavel also said extremists should not be given the same room as everybody else. “We can’t give the same room to extremism as we do to other opinions. On the contrary, I believe we have to make every effort to gradually displace extremism from our lives. When we give it the same space, we legitimize it,” he said.
The first round of the presidential elections took place on 13 and 14 January and Pavel eked out a narrow victory. The second round will take place on 27 and 28 January.
