PRAGUE — The Czech Republic's ruling Social Democrats (ČSSD) are attempting to pep up their brand ahead of October's election by taking more populist positions in response to plummeting poll numbers and regional election setbacks last year.

The Social Democrats — who head a three-party ruling coalition — suffered a heavy blow when Andrej Babiš’ populist ANO movement outperformed them in a number of key regions in 2016. The ČSSD's share of the vote slipped to 15.4 percent from more than 20 percent, and its support now stands at 12-14 percent in polls.

Now, in an effort to reclaim lost ground in October's parliamentary election, the party is trying to capitalize on domestic anti-European and anti-immigrant sentiment, which Babiš and President Miloš Zeman continue to successfully exploit.

Following the end of communist rule in 1989, the Czech Republic became a poster child for democratic transition, thanks to the late Václav Havel’s focus on social inclusion and civil rights. Since joining the EU in 2004, it has been a stalwart member, despite the repeated protests of the deeply Euroskeptic former prime minister and president, Václav Klaus.

But the migrant crisis changed everything, unleashing a previously unvoiced strain of xenophobia among the Czechs. Emboldened by the anti-migrant positions of their Polish, Hungarian and Slovak neighbors, Czech politicians now feel they have a strong card to play in resisting the EU’s migrant quota directive.

This threatens to exacerbate a growing East-West divide in the EU, as the four Central European nations move toward a two-speed Union in which they take the slow lane. This specter was raised by Zeman last week when, in response to the European Court of Justice's rejection of Slovakia and Hungary’s challenge to the migrant quotas, he said: “If worse comes to worse, then it would be better to forego EU subsidies than open the door to migrants."

The Social Democrats played a key role after the Velvet Revolution — which put to an end to 41 years of communism — “explaining democratic values to people who didn’t want to be capitalists or bourgeois," said Alexandr Mitrofanov, who has followed the party for a quarter of a century for the Czech daily Pravo.

The party appealed to people who "just wanted to have their jobs, their beer, their pork and cabbage, to raise their children and somehow to live," he said. "Before the revolution, these people were associated with the Communist Party. They knew nothing about democracy or freedom.”

Three in four Czechs said migrants pose as great a threat to national security as ISIS.

This is the group the party is targeting again now in its campaign for the upcoming general election, but with a different message.

At the same time, over the years, the party’s social democratic vision attracted voters from the growing middle class, who were educated, professional and cosmopolitan.

Mitrofanov said the party’s political shift began last year, shortly before the sacking of Jiří Dienstbier Jr., the minister for human rights and equal opportunities and the leader of the party's liberal wing.

'Betrayed'

One day last November, the minister was called into the office of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka for what he assumed was a routine meeting. Instead, Sobotka, a friend and long-time political ally, fired him.

“I still don’t know why,” Dienstbier said recently in a Prague café. “You could say I felt betrayed. I supported Sobotka during the most difficult times of his political career. It was not easy for me, personally.”

When Sobotka resigned as party chairman in June, he was replaced by Interior Minister Milan Chovanec, one of two senior party leaders Mitrofanov credits with reorienting the party's strategy. The other is Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek, who was named head of party's campaign for the October election.

“At that time, our government needed much broader personnel reconstruction,” Zaorálek said in an email, in which he denied the firing was personal.

“Sobotka was not satisfied with the work of several ministers from all three [coalition] parties and believed the cabinet needed some fresh energy, a more active approach and, in some cases, improved communication.”

He added: “It is no secret that [Dienstbier] had suffered defeats on some issues within the coalition, struggled to find sufficient support within the party and, more importantly, his ratings were not very good even among ČSSD voters.”

'Nonsense' directives

Whatever the cause, the sacking was weighted with symbolism.

Dienstbier, a long-time icon of liberal social democracy, was a co-founder of the dissident student group Stuha, which in the late 1980s was instrumental in galvanizing the broad protests that eventually toppled the communist regime.

His father was jailed under the communist regime for his dissident activities and became the first non-communist foreign minister in 40 years. He was also a close friend of Havel's, the last president of Czechoslovakia and first president of the Czech Republic.

By sidelining the younger Dienstbier, the party appeared to be attempting to eradicate a part of Czech political history.

The minister was unpopular with more nationalist members of the party, and particularly with Chovanec, who has styled himself as the figurehead of Czech resistance to domestically unpopular directives from the European Union, especially regarding migrant quotas and gun control. Critics, including Dienstbier, accuse him of trying to capitalize on voters' susceptibility to a populist message.

According to a poll by the CVVM institute conducted in spring, 61 percent of Czechs are against accepting additional refugees, while nearly three in four said migrants pose as great a threat to national security as ISIS. The country has so far accepted only 12 of its allocated quota of 2,691 immigrants.

In June, Chovanec announced that the Czech Republic would not accept any more migrants on the basis of the EU-mandated quotas due to “the aggravated security situation and the dysfunctionality of the whole system.”

When, two months later, the Czech government filed a lawsuit against the EU’s guns directive — primarily aimed at curtailing access to semi-automatic weapons — Chovanec called the directive “nonsensical,” saying it “undermined people’s trust in the EU.”

Zaorálek rejected suggestions that the government’s stance against the EU’s gun control directive was politically motivated.

“There is a general political consensus that the directive seeks to regulate some kinds of weapons in an unfortunate way,” he said. “On the other hand, this is not a big issue in Czech politics. Actually, it is no issue in the October election.”

'Neither nationalist nor populist'

Zaorálek also dismissed accusations that the party is pursuing a nationalist or populist agenda.

“This [accusation] may be … a consequence of the recent disagreement about the relocation quota,” said the foreign minister. “But the Czech anti-quota position was neither nationalist nor populist. It was just realist — and more and more people all over Europe can see and acknowledge it now."

If Babiš is the country’s next prime minister, the country may well become a hotbed for xenophobia and exclusion.

"As for nationalism, Social Democrats never play the 'identity' card or attack social liberal values. On the contrary, we feel horrified by the racist discourse and by the kind of scaremongering that stretches the alleged immigrant and terrorist threat beyond any limit justified by the recent European experience.”

Dienstbier, too, is wary of branding his party’s leaders as nationalist. But, he said, it is clear that Chovanec has attempted to shift the tone of discourse by peddling a populist message.

The minister is “always trying to see what is popular and following the public’s wishes," Dienstbier said. "He has no deep concept of Social Democratic policy. I can’t see him as a modern, progressive leader of the party.”

The party’s increasingly hard-line anti-EU stance, especially on immigration, risks alienating those Social Democratic voters “who are educated and deeply understand that they need and want democracy and freedom," according to Mitrofanov.

"But these people are rare. And the ČSSD now is doing everything to expel those people.”

Both Dienstbier and Mitrofanov say these voters are now casting about for parties that better reflect their social democratic values, such as the center-right TOP 09 or the Greens. If the trend continues, the Social Democrats could lose the long-time supporters that best embody the party's stated ideals.

“The party is in trouble,” said Dienstbier.

And if, as expected, Babiš is the country’s next prime minister and the Social Democrats join his government, the country may well become a hotbed for xenophobia and exclusion — and another potential threat to the political integrity of the EU.