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Picture Him in a Mohawk: A Czech Prince Seeks Young Voters

A girl in Ostrava wears a T-shirt bearing a picture of Karel Schwarzenberg, a candidate for Czech president, reimagined as a punk rocker to appeal to young voters.Credit...Milan Bures for the International Herald Tribune

PRAGUE — His face stares out from campaign posters in music clubs and hip cafes, a 75-year-old prince retooled as a punk rocker with a hot pink mohawk and lofty presidential ambitions.

As Czechs head to the polls in presidential elections on Friday and Saturday, advisers to the prince, Karel Schwarzenberg, who is also the Czech Republic’s foreign minister, hope that the jarring image — modeled on a Sex Pistols album cover — will resonate with young voters and help catapult him to Prague Castle, the office of the president.

Quick to disarm anyone who might dismiss him as fusty, Mr. Schwarzenberg, whose full name and title in German is Karel Johannes Nepomuk Joseph Norbert Friedrich Antonius Wratislaw Menas Fürst zu Schwarzenberg, says he prefers Karel.

Mr. Schwarzenberg, whose family once ranked among the wealthiest aristocrats in Europe, is a pro-European member of the center-right governing coalition. He has emerged as a surprisingly strong contender in the race to succeed President Vaclav Klaus, who has equated the European Union with the former Soviet bloc.

Although the Czech presidency is largely a ceremonial post, it carries deep moral authority. The president also wields some influence in foreign policy, makes appointments to the central bank and approves the appointment of judges.

Mr. Schwarzenberg is battling Milos Zeman, 68, the front-runner, a leftist former prime minister who narrowly beat him in the first round of the elections, gaining 24.2 percent of the vote against 23.4 percent for Mr. Schwarzenberg, who more than doubled his predicted share.

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Mr. Schwarzenberg, 75, who is a prince and the Czech foreign minister, has emerged as a surprisingly strong contender.Credit...Milan Bures for the International Herald Tribune

David Cerny, a Czech artist who created the punk-prince image and is a campaign adviser, said the rebranding was an appeal to younger Czechs who still regarded Mr. Schwarzenberg as an old and conservative uncle. “The depiction of Karel as a punk was meant to be ironic, but it is also fitting, as Karel has always been a rebel, stubborn and determined, an indestructible bulldozer,” Mr. Cerny said.

The elections, the first direct vote for president here, signal the end of an era, that of the two Vaclavs — Havel and Klaus — who have dominated Czech politics for the past two decades. Vaclav Havel, the idealist-dreamer and playwright who led the Velvet Revolution in 1989 before becoming the first post-Communist president, died in late 2011. Mr. Klaus, his nemesis, steps down in March after two five-year terms.

“We are seeing the end of the era of the giant and unquestioned names in Czech politics,” said Erik Tabery, a leading journalist. “The country is in a bad mood because of a feeling that more than two decades after the revolution, things should be better than they are.”

Although the Czech Republic has not suffered from the same sharp economic pain as the southern European economies, it has been buffeted by 9.4 percent unemployment, weak economic growth and a series of corruption scandals.

Against that backdrop, the avuncular and urbane Mr. Schwarzenberg has emerged as a conciliatory candidate of unexpectedly wide appeal. Yet he has several challenges to overcome, including his exile to Austria during the Communist period, which some critics, including Mr. Klaus, have seized on to dismiss him as a foreigner. Therese, his Austrian wife, does not speak Czech.

He himself still speaks the somewhat archaic Czech of his childhood and has been criticized for incoherence and for dozing off during debates. (His aides say he closes his eyes when faced with strong spotlights.)

That sort of haziness extends to his political career, in the minds of his critics, who portray him as a political opportunist who has flip-flopped between parties in the pursuit of power.

“He has been linked to three or four different parties on both left and right, from Greens to conservatives, in the aim of attaining high office,” said Tomas Jirsa, former vice chairman of a national conservative youth group. “Today he is a conservative, but who knows tomorrow?”

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A young girl wore a T-shirt with an image of Karel Schwarzenberg during a concert to support his presidential candidacy.

Credit...
  • Slide 1 of 8

    A young girl wore a T-shirt with an image of Karel Schwarzenberg during a concert to support his presidential candidacy.

    Credit...

At best, Mr. Jirsa said, Mr. Schwarzenberg has shown a desire to emulate his previous boss, Mr. Havel, and transcend ideology. But that, he says, is politically naïve.

Mr. Schwarzenberg’s life has been deeply influenced by what he has described as his involuntary departure from Czechoslovakia in 1948, when his family fled its castle in Prague after the Communists took over.

Yet Mr. Schwarzenberg never lost a strong sense of civic duty to the country of his birth.

While in exile in Vienna in 1984, he became president of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights and cast himself as an important liaison between the West and Czechoslovak dissidents, including Mr. Havel.

After the fall of Communism in 1989, he returned to Czechoslovakia to work for Mr. Havel, offering up his glittering foreign contacts. He became a senator in 2004 and three years later foreign minister and a keen supporter of the United States.

After helping found TOP 09, a conservative political party, in 2009, he became foreign minister in the current center-right coalition government of Prime Minister Petr Necas, which has been criticized for passing tough austerity measures. Mr. Schwarzenberg, however, has not always agreed with all the government’s policies. His support for the Dalai Lama and the Russian punk band Pussy Riot led Mr. Necas to warn that his advocacy could threaten Czech exports to Russia and China. But Mr. Schwarzenberg refused to back down.

Such an independent streak has appealed to young people, and on a recent night at a concert in his honor, the crowd was dominated by people in their 20s.

Wearing a “punk Karel” pin, Lada Bily, 25, said he was voting for Mr. Schwarzenberg, in part because his wealth would make him immune from corruption. His advanced age, he added, was no disadvantage.

Mr. Schwarzenberg himself has dismissed those who have criticized his age and soporific tendencies.

“I fall asleep,” he was once quoted on a billboard as saying, “when others talk nonsense.”

Hana de Goeij contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Picture Him in a Mohawk: A Czech Prince Seeks Young Voters. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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