Politics & Power Quote by Vaclav Klaus

Klaus is doing something more surgical than cheerleading capitalism: he’s trying to prevent the first public encounter with “the market” from feeling like a mugging. The line is pitched as technocratic caution - “time,” “strict rules,” “low price” - but the real target is political legitimacy. Post-communist privatization wasn’t just an economic transfer; it was a referendum on whether the new order deserved trust. If factories and apartments are flipped for pennies through insider deals, the public doesn’t experience reform as liberation. They experience it as theft with new branding.

The phrase “Communist managers” is a rhetorical scalpel. Klaus doesn’t blame “the state” or even “bureaucracy”; he pins corruption on a recognizable class of holdovers, implying continuity of personnel is the problem, not the market itself. That framing protects his broader project: a rapid transition can still be defended, provided the gatekeepers of the old regime don’t rig the first auction. “Under the table” does heavy moral lifting, translating arcane privatization mechanics into a kitchen-table crime story.

The subtext is fear of a backlash: if privatization looks like a fire sale to cronies, voters will reject not only particular deals but the entire idea of market reform. Klaus is implicitly acknowledging an uncomfortable truth about transition politics: markets aren’t self-justifying. They need rituals of fairness - procedures that look clean - or they’ll be remembered as the moment the public commons became someone else’s origin story.