Austrian and PR.
Vít Rakusán, the Czech Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, along with his pundits and consulting team, decided that they needed to start the election campaign a little earlier than just in time. The STAN chairman's version of a question-and-answer roadshow was an upgrade of earlier, but also quite recent, campaigns by other entities in the form of richly or modestly decorated buses, camper vans and cars criss-crossing the entire republic. The level of attractiveness of the likely confrontation rose sharply with the publication of the itinerary. Carefully selected places, such as Karviná, Sokolov, Most and others, are a deliberate hit to the taste of journalists who greedily welcome latent conflict, clash or dispute served under their noses. The more or less viral effect is thus taken care of. The defence of the government's action in correcting the state of public finances, naively expected by some, is thus more than logically absent, and instead a debate rages as to whether this is not just an unfair move by one of the coalition partners. However, assessing the correctness of politicians' marketing activities is a rather depressing discipline, and the use of the comparative method is not always the right approach. Of course, accepting the thesis of a heroic, altruistic and righteous campaign by one of the representatives of the executive in the name of a sincere apologetics of the government's actions is not easy. Although it is possible that in the short term the partisan action of Vit Rakus will bring political points to both the STAN movement and to him, the accompanying odour is that the credibility of the current leadership of the country has been reduced by another degree. A stronger product for an action of this type would be a line-up including representatives of all the governing entities, some of whom would not necessarily be among the best known and busiest politicians or officials. The impact of the unfavourable impression of separation, diversion, non-identification, and at the same time the creation of a superstructure of personal PR on the basis of the role of an unelected arbiter of the methods of government measures of which Vít Rakusán is a co-author or at least a co-applicant would be dramatically reduced.