PRAGUE (AP) — Over the past 10 years, Czech President Milos Zeman has courted controversy, seeking a referendum on whether his country should leave the European Union, targeting migrants and joking about killing journalists.
Many Czechs will cheer the departure of their outgoing head of state Wednesday — with one activist group planning to burn Zeman in effigy and cast the ashes into Prague’s Vltava River.
Zeman will be replaced in the largely ceremonial post by retired army general Petr Pavel, who beat a populist billionaire in the second round of presidential elections on Jan 28. Pavel formally takes over Thursday.
In his two consecutive terms in office, Zeman, 78, has polarized public opinion. A divided nation to which he contributed will be the most visible legacy of his reign while much of his political agenda at home and abroad failed.
While his predecessors, Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus, were elected by Parliament, when former prime minister Zeman took the office in 2013 it was in a direct vote by the Czech public. His ally Andrej Babis — who unsuccessfully ran against Pavel in January — became finance minister the same year before later assuming the post of prime minister.
“It turned out that a directly elected president can turn semi-dictator if he has the will and faces a weak opponent in the prime minister,” said Vera Kovarova, a deputy speaker of Parliament’s lower house from the STAN party
Zeman was considered more pro-European than his euroskeptic predecessor Klaus, but gradually used every opportunity to attack the EU, including its plan to tackle climate change. After Britain decided to leave the EU, he proposed a referendum on the country’s membership in the bloc — while saying he would vote to stay.
He also sought closer ties with China and became a leading pro-Russian voice in EU politics.
His critics called him “a servant of the Kremlin” after he sided with Russia and cast doubt on the findings of his country’s own security and intelligence services on the alleged participation of Russian spies in a huge 2014 ammunition explosion.
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After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Zeman condemned the “unprovoked act of aggression,” but he had opposed the initial EU sanctions against Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Zeman declared he would focus on economic diplomacy but his promises of Chinese investments worth billions of dollars never materialized and his hopes to boost ties with Russia came to a complete end with the invasion of Ukraine.
On the 25th anniversary of the 1989 anti-communist Velvet Revolution that year, protesters pelted him with eggs, sandwiches and tomatoes, accusing him of betraying the commitment to human rights enshrined by Havel, the hero of the revolution.
Zeman was one of the few European leaders to endorse Donald Trump’s bid for the White Houseand support his decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. His pro- isreal country, which is one of the strongest allies of Israel in the EU.