Commentary: Pavel outside the institution. The president will get away with it again

We will take another step towards a system in which the formation of the government will no longer be the sole responsibility of the prime minister as in parliamentarism, but will become the result of consultations with the cadre department of Prague Castle.

It may seem like it's been going on forever, but the Czech constitution has only just been shaken to its foundations. Prime Minister Andrej Babiš presented President Petr Pavlov with the official nomination of Filip Turek for the post of Minister of the Environment, and the president declared that he refused to appoint him to the position.

Up until this point, it had only been a warning. It could have been "just" a negotiation, albeit a rather indiscriminate one on the part of the president. The harsh (albeit quite apt) assessment of Turek's personal qualities, the discouraging of the prime minister from the nomination, the downplaying of the importance of the personal meeting, references to the relationship to the rules and constitutional frameworks, and even the threat of rejecting the candidate, all of these could have been just parts of the negotiation tactics.

But now the head of state has really come across the boundaries of the constitution - and found himself beyond them. At least according to the widely shared interpretation of the constitutional order, which attributed to the prime minister "unlimited competence to nominate whomever he wants to the government through the president", as the former head of the Constitutional Court, Pavel Rychetský, put it .

Of course, Petr Pavel is not standing on completely uncharted territory. Where he now finds himself, he can see around him the relatively fresh traces of Miloš Zeman (pointing somewhere far away) and the somewhat faded imprints of previous presidents. But that does not make the situation any less unpleasant. If only because it was Petr Pavel who promised during the campaign to scrupulously adhere to constitutional guidelines and not venture into little-explored territories beyond them.

Yes, Petr Pavel is claiming a political victory - Filip Turek will not be a minister. We can say that almost with certainty today, because Andrej Babiš seems resigned to this issue. He does not want to get into a competence dispute, both because he wants some kind of relationship with the Castle, and because he himself does not want Turek in his cabinet and does not intend to bleed for him.

Motorists may be upset, but they have no more subtle tool in their hands to defend Turek than the threat of denouncing coalition obedience. And they will think twice about that too.

But Pavlo's victory is short-lived and causes a lot of collateral damage. On one side of the scale is the fact that there will not be one inflated influencer ego sitting in the government, confusing self-confidence and social media reach with political (or any other) competence. Fine.

On the other hand, there is another violation of constitutional rules, which the next president will probably get away with very cheaply again. The Czech Republic will thus take another step towards a system in which the formation of the government will no longer be the sole responsibility of the prime minister, as in parliamentarism, but will become the result of mandatory consultations between the prime minister and the personnel department of Prague Castle.

The latter will be bothered by insufficient education here, lack of experience there, violations of road traffic rules there, and unpleasant things from social networks there - depending on who happens to be sitting in Hradčany. Which, however, means a step towards a hybrid quasi-presidential system.

This was, after all, the publicly declared goal of Miloš Zeman's presidency. The high point of his era was the appointment of a presidential government regardless of the parliamentary majority. Even this, drunk on the magic of a mandate from direct elections, ultimately got away with without consequences for the president. That is where the tracks that Petr Pavel has now set out lead. Whether he continues to follow them is clearly up to him; he will not receive any correction from the prime minister. We will see.

Source: Seznam zprávy