Commentary: Why I don't want Tomio Okamura for President of the Czech Republic

I have read a great deal on the topic of the controversial Czech-Japanese entrepreneur Tomio Okamura and there’s not much new to say about him. Some people literally worship him, others curse him and are not far from hating him. Should this country ever hold direct elections for president, I would like to explain the main reason I do not want this populist to become president of the Czech Republic.

I remember a time long ago, before Okamura became just another populist, when I rather liked him. It was his name, not quite two years ago, that forced me to sit down in front of the television and watch a few episodes, with interest, of the program “D-Day”, in which he performed as an investor. I still recall a little incident about him that took place at work and is forever engraved in my memory.

I was talking enthusiastically about Tomio with an acquaintance of mine who happens to be married to a Japanese woman, and I expected him to be just as enthusiastic in his response, which made me all the more disappointed when he turned as red as a tomato and said he had never met a more arrogant person in his life. At the time I wondered what could be arrogant about the congenial, smiling man who jumped out at me from the television one evening per week.

Tomio Okamura was born in 1972 in Tokyo, Japan. His father is Japanese and his mother was Czech. He spent his childhood between the former Czechoslovakia and Japan. Okamura often claims to have experienced racism and xenophobia his entire life, whether in Bohemia or in his native Japan. He says people laughed at him in Japan, pointed at him on the street, and cursed him for being a “gaijin” (a non-Japanese).

Okamura says life in Bohemia was similar and often movingly describes people often bluntly pointing out his difference to him by cursing him for being Chinese or Vietnamese and refusing to cooperate with him before he had even opened his mouth. In one interview, Okamura self-confidently states: “I have the feeling that if some of them didn’t know who I am, they would be laughing at me to this day.”

I would expect a person who has undergone these kind of racist slights in his youth to follow the well-known saying “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Instead, I have the feeling that Tomio Okamura brazenly exploits his ethnic origin as an alibi for espousing racist opinions. Last year he happily wondered on his blog what is so extremist about the neo-Nazi Workers’ Party. These statements literally propelled me out of my chair:

“We write of the Workers’ Party that it is extremist, but what is it really? How is the opinion extreme that the Gypsies should found their own state and the Czech Republic should support their emigration to the country of their ancestors?”

He has also defended the fascist National Party:”The National Party, for which the ill-fated Mr Bátora once ran as non-member candidate, is not a party that I have ever voted for, but in any event it was a legitimate political entity registered with the Interior Ministry and met the legal requirement that its program not contravene the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and that it not promote violence against individuals or groups. The National Party was a properly registered political party and no court proceedings to stop its activity were ever initiated against it.”

In his recently published book, “The Art of Governing” (“Umění vládnout”), the distracted Okamura has evidently forgotten he ever wrote this statement on his blog.

Okamura also stood up for an anti-Semite in the Education Ministry and repeatedly defended the racist Pechanec, who has been convicted of murder: “I would remind you that any one of us could suddenly become a Bátora, a Hilsner, a Pechanec. Condemned a priori and for life, without the change to defend oneself. Without being guilty.”

That last sentence, “Without being guilty”, has also been left out of Okamura’s latest book – probably forgotten by accident.

Okamura refers to Pechanec once more in another article: “I continue to recall the even more appalling crime committed by the judges against Vlastimil Pechanec. He too was convicted despite evidence of his innocence.”

In a recent interview for Parlamentní listy, this know-it-all convincingly claimed he was not considering a political career because it would significantly reduce his income. Now it is almost sure he will run for the Senate at least. The populist Okamura knows very well what the crowd will listen to today, which is why he intentionally says the attractive things that people want to hear. He is willing to do and say almost anything for that popularity, including traveling around the country with his own circus show.

If Okamura were to become president in a direct election, he would have the power to grant pardons as soon as they entered his mind. I do not want convicted neo-Nazi racist murderers running around freely, so I am against Tomio Okamura becoming president of the Czech Republic should there be direct elections.