Petr Fiala: a former professor of political science appointed Czech Prime Minister
Eva Deschamps / November 28, 2021
Petr Fiala, who was appointed Czech Prime Minister on Sunday, is a former professor of political science, as well as a fan of James Bond films, literature and soccer.
The 57-year-old carefully guards his privacy and is now on the biggest mission of his life after leading the center-right alliance Ensemble to a narrow electoral victory in October. I'm James Bond actually, he once said in an interview. Bond can shoot well and so can I. He also speaks several languages and is well educated, and I hope I meet those criteria as well, Fiala said. Ensemble, comprising Mr. Fiala's right-wing Civic Democrats (ODS) and small centrist Christian Democratic parties and center-right TOP 09, defeated the populist ANO movement of outgoing billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis. We have given the Czech Republic a chance for a better future. This is a change, we are a change, you are a change, Mr. Fiala told his supporters after the vote. Mr. Fiala started in politics as a scientific advisor to the Prime Minister in 2011 and to the Minister of Education a year later. He was elected as a member of parliament in the October 2013 parliamentary elections before joining the ODS a month later and becoming its president in January 2014. Born in the second largest Czech city Brno on September 1, 1964, Mr. Fiala grew up in a conservative family.
I was raised with a democratic mindset. For me, democracy and freedom are things that I have considered right since I was a child, he said. The new Prime Minister has a degree in Czech language and literature, as well as in history. He has worked as a historian and journalist. After the overthrow of the totalitarian communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia in 1989, he co-founded the department of political science at Masaryk University in Brno, a discipline that had been banned by the communist regime. He headed the department from 1993 to 2002 before taking over as director of international relations and European studies for two years. Appointed the country's first-ever professor of political science in 2002, Fiala served as rector of Masaryk University from 2004 to 2011. A pragmatic believer, he was baptized in 1986 when the church was still persecuted by the communist government. Faith means to me a certain interpretation of the world, but it doesn't have an answer for every situation, he said in an interview. The fundamental thing is that man is created as a free being.