Zuzana Čaputová: President and mother

‘How to not lose yourself.’ Sounds like a cliché, doesn’t it? Especially in politics. It’s all the more interesting when someone truly means it. Like, for example, the only woman ever to become president in the Central European region. Despite a successful five years as head of state, she never ran for a second term.

How to Not Lose Yourselfis also the title of a book co-authored by Erik Tabery, editor-in-chief of the most prestigious Czech publication, the weekly Respekt, and Zuzana Čaputová, former president of the Slovak Republic. It is a book about a straight-A student, a kind, pleasant, conscientious woman who achieved a dizzying political career at a young age, but voluntarily descended the ladder of power to the ground again. Such politicians exist even today. 

Tao Te Ching 

It is interesting that despite all the emancipation, not much is changing at the top of the pyramid of power in our corner of the world. Neither Poland, nor the Czech Republic, nor Hungary, and for that matter not even Germany or Austria have had a woman as the head of state. Zuzana Čaputová was the first woman in the modern history of Central Europe to occupy the presidential chair, in Bratislava. In addition to this, she was merely forty-five, and – although it is probably not politically correct to say so today – a charming woman. A ‘womanly’ woman. And what’s more, a newly divorced mother of two adolescent daughters. 

It is not often that the New York Times praises a politician from post-communist Europe. In fact, since Václav Havel, no head of state from this region has played a major role (with the unfortunate exception of Putin’s henchman, Viktor Orbán). But then along came Zuzana, and the Times took notice. In an article headlined ‘The Lawyer Who Took on the Mob Becomes Slovakia’s First Female President,’ it wrote about her long-standing battle against corruption and illegal activities linked to the construction of illegal landfills in the town of Pezinok, where Čaputová persisted in her fight against business groups, despite facing intimidation. 

This story earned Čaputová the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2016 and was also the first step on her path to the presidency, although she wasn’t planning on it at the time. “I think for a long time, I didn’t identify as a political being, since when I entered municipal politics, I viewed it in purely pragmatic terms, as helping the city,” she shares in an interview from the book. 

She was a conscientious, straight-A student at school, and those around her often made fun of her enthusiasm for homework. In the book, she says, “I have had a book on my bedside table since I was seventeen, Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. It’s a book intended to inspire personal journeys in harmony with higher principles, but it’s also about how to manage society and govern in accordance with them, as he described it 2,600 years ago.” 

Like Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk with Karel Čapek. Zuzana Čaputová held talks with Erik Tabery, editor-in-chief of the weekly Respekt, while she was still president. Photo: Milan Jaroš, týdeník Respekt

This reader of the Taoist canon lived through the Velvet Revolution as a teenager, and her mother used to tell her about who Václav Havel was, also the author of the term ‘power of the powerless.’ Little Zuzana was fascinated by the story of dissent. “Pezinok is near the Austrian border, where we were not allowed, which was absurd. Of course, we used to get Austrian TV channels,” she recalls about the period of life behind the Iron Curtain, just a short distance from democracy. A democracy she was later so good at defending as a lawyer and president. 

And remarkably, she did not become a victim of her own success. Erik Tabery said of her, “I was very impressed that she stayed the same throughout her time in office. I’ve never seen that in any other politician. I never encountered any condescension from her. She read philosophical books when she was young, so there was a humility and an awareness of the permanent service of testing oneself. She does not feel that she is superior to others, nor that any form she takes in a given moment should change her. This was to some extent the defining reason why she decided not to run a second time. She was concerned that it would move her to a place she didn’t want to be in anymore, where she wouldn’t be in control.” 

Before the Presidency

As a lawyer, she represented women in need, and later became involved in the aforementioned landfills. She was approached by the liberal Progressive Slovakia movement, where she became vice-president. At first, she thought she would be more of an analyst for her party, but she gradually became an increasingly prominent figure, until the movement decided on her candidacy for President of the Slovak Republic. Čaputová announced her candidacy in 2018 shortly after the murder of Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his partner, Martina Kušnírová. A year later, businessman Marián Kočner, who was also implicated in the illegal landfill case, was accused of ordering the murder.

At the beginning of the campaign, Zuzana Čaputová was on the lowest rungs of preference rankings, but once the first debates started, the numbers went up. In the debates, the future president – unlike the other candidates – spoke spontaneously, sincerely, with a positive energy, and did not attack her opponents. Thus, on the soil of Slovak politics, an otherwise quite toxic environment, a rose blossomed among the thorns. 

Being ‘different’ means, of course, having inner strength. “In my childhood and adolescence, I had to stand on my own feet relatively quickly – that’s where the interest in philosophy, religion, contact with meditation arose,” Zuzana explains. She has been practicing meditation for twenty years and has not stopped even as president. She followed the motto, “if you have time, you should meditate for twenty minutes, and if you don’t have time, you should meditate for an hour.” 

Prison with Daughters

But success in her career has coincided with difficult moments in her personal life. Between the election and the inauguration, one of her daughters was diagnosed with a tumour. Zuzana was ready to give up the presidency, but the doctors explained to her that fortunately it was not a serious form of the disease, and she accepted the mandate. “I remember the inauguration day, when I was supposed to give a speech in front of the nation, a lot of media, for the first time as president. I said my daughter’s name in my heart, and suddenly it was clear what really mattered. In some ways, the weight in another area was liberating.” 

On the day of her election, Zuzana Čaputová was driven home by security. And they remained with her and her two teenage daughters. It was a time when the new president was receiving threats, which were not to be taken lightly. “I had a very strong feeling of being a prisoner at that time,” Zuzana Čaputová says in the book. Suddenly you can do everything, but at the same time you can do nothing. Being on duty is twenty-four hours a day. And that a person in such a position is lonely. “All my life, I have tried to do things that make sense, and at the same time live in harmony with myself. Combining those two things is important to me. And I know that I now owe myself,” she told Tabery during one of the conversations they had when she was president. 

She spoke interestingly about how the presidency changed her relationship with herself. “I probably took womanhood as a weakness and compensated for it with performance.” During her time in office, however, she began to feel that in many ways she was denying her self. She began to think more about her childhood, growing up and womanhood. 

Zuzana Čaputová in front of Bellevue Palace in Berlin with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Photo: ČTK / DPA / Bernd von Jutrczenka

Erik Tabery says today, “A woman’s story is very different from a man’s, although men often think that if they apply their perspective to everything, then it’s best for everyone. But a purely male perspective can’t work. Society probably needs to go through what Zuzana Čaputová did and realise that we don’t all have the same opportunities, and that in order to understand others, we need to be able to see differences. And it also shows that we need the female element in politics as equally as the male one. In short, we need to strengthen the humanity and empathy components of politics.” 

Father and Holy Father

Zuzana was not only switching from the role of president to that of mother, but also to that of daughter. Her father had been a cancer patient for four years. At her suggestion, he spent the end of his life at home, requiring comprehensive care. The family took turns staying with him according to a schedule. “It was a very special and interesting experience. We were close to death until the last breath. We were all scared at the beginning, but I feel that in a sense it was a gift. The idea of death was scarier than the reality of death,” the ex-president recalls. 

The visit of the Pope also took place at that time. Although her father was not a practicing Catholic, he expressed a desire to meet the Pope. He was supposed to attend the audience, but in the end,  it was not possible in his condition. After her return from Bratislava, his daughter Zuzana came to tell him that the Pope had blessed him. Her father said “yes,” and made a cross in the air with his hand. His daughter then went back to the Pope’s Mass in Šaštín. “I was sitting in the Mass and before it started, I suddenly had a strange feeling. I became overwhelmed with anxiety and burst into tears. There were cameras there and people probably thought I was moved by the Pope’s visit, but apparently those were the exact minutes when father breathed his last breath. When Mass was over, I went to the car and the secretary told me that my father had died. It was as if he had come to say goodbye to me at that time, as they say,” says Zuzana Čaputová, who was to meet the Holy Father at the airport shortly afterwards. She recalls how she “pulled herself together” in the car. Meanwhile, the Pope had learned of the event, and consoled her in the airport hall and prayed for her father. As she accompanied him to the plane, the entire Vatican entourage offered their condolences. “I was standing at the airport, waving to the Pope as he took off, and at the same time to my father in heaven. Tears were flowing, cameras were running and people started to notice. They didn’t yet know what had happened. This was an absolutely unique situation where I have to endure the role of head of state, but at the same time I am a daughter whose father has just passed away. It was both sad and beautiful.” 

Zuzana’s father was also the impetus for developing closer ties with German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The German president arrived in Slovakia a few days before the death of Zuzana Čaputová’s father. “And in the meantime, my daughter Emka had another major check-up at the hospital. So I had my dad on his deathbed and a frightened Emka, plus a visit from Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the Pope was coming.”

The German president learned of her situation and spoke to her encouragingly. “I wondered how I was going to manage all this. It was an intense period and I’m glad that it’s possible to talk with some leaders about family and privacy. And I think that’s what creates a certain human bond between heads of state,” Zuzana Čaputová recalls. 

Pardon’s Child

From a political perspective, the Slovakian president was pro-European and liberal, as a former environmental lawyer with an awareness of ecological issues. Her style was evident when she granted pardons. Along with her team, she made sure to find out all the circumstances relating to the convicted individual, their behaviour in prison and what circumstances they would return to in the event they were pardoned. “I am not inclined to correct a court’s decision; rather, I respect it fully, but it is often evident in the verdict that the court tried to do everything in its power to reduce the sentence with a view to the circumstances, but was unable to grant a pardon. Only I can do that. It’s a strange feeling when I lie down at night, the decision has already been signed and I know that that person will go home tomorrow, but they don’t know it yet. Yesterday I met up with a young man whom I pardoned; he came with his wife, who was his lifelong love, and waited for him while he was carrying out his sentence. A year and a half ago they had a child, and I call him ‘pardon’s child,’ because his dad would otherwise still be sitting in prison,” she recalls in the book.

A Country of Contrasts

The book about the president, whom Czechs genuinely envied their Slovak friends at the time of Miloš Zeman’s presidency, is very open and human by political standards. Erik Tabery concludes, “Slovakia is a complicated country in many ways. It can be compared to the United States of America in the sense that it is a country full of contrasts and is completely different in different regions. The contrasts then create certain tensions, which create extremes that are greater than in the Czech Republic, and I mean that for better or for worse. What politicians in Slovakia are not ashamed to say in public, no one in the Czech Republic would say out loud.” 

After leaving office, Zuzana Čaputová is, according to those around her, much more relaxed and cheerful. “It’s logical, she has time to relax and do what she enjoys – cycling, reading books, spending time with her daughters,” Tabery says. “The feeling of having to be ready at any moment has fallen from her shoulders. To have five years of permanent obligations without a break is hugely challenging.” Zuzana calls it her “quiet joy, when everything is as it is and nothing extraordinary has to happen.” 

She is planning her future in academia. “I would like to focus more on growing than fighting. These last five years have been really intense and now I’d like to focus on something positive that will continue to expand. The way I defined it once was that you can’t defeat evil by fighting, because we amplify it by fighting. Evil can be defeated by expanding the space of good,” says this kind, conscientious fifty-two-year-old woman, now a former president. 

This article appeared in the seventh issue of the print magazine N&N – Noble Notes