Tattooed artist runs for Czech president

PRAGUE (AP) — He’s tattooed from head to toe, a warrior-like mix of blue, green and red.

He’s also running in a surprising third place ahead of this week’s Czech presidential elections.

Vladimir Franz, an opera composer and painter, seems the most unlikely of candidates for a prestigious post previously held by beloved playwright-dissident Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus, a professor credited with plotting the economic transition from communism to a free market.

Some have a nickname for Franz: ‘Avatar.’ And during a televised debate a caller compared him to “an exotic creature from Papua New Guinea.”

But he’s not short of admirers in a country where voters are increasingly tired of politicians they say are corrupt and failing to deliver on years of promises, more than two decades after the fall of communism.

Franz has no political experience and confesses to little knowledge of economics. He says he only threw his hat in the ring after a group of admirers established the Franz for President initiative and begged him to shake up the race through his shock factor. But he’s stirred up such goodwill that a leading economist offered his services for free and his campaign workers are also volunteers.

He’s only spent $25,000 from donations on his campaign and hasn’t put up any posters.

Franz burst onto the political scene with an eye-catching 88,000 signatures from the public at the end of 2012 — far more than the 50,000 required by law.

Not affiliated with any party, he has campaigned mostly on a platform highlighting graft, the importance of education and the nation’s moral standing.

“The (political) system is so enchanted with itself that it’s lost the ability to self-reflect,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press Tuesday. Czechs, he says, “are fed up with this crap.”

He’s proven particularly popular with young voters — and those not yet eligible to cast a ballot. In a mock presidential election at 441 high schools across the country a month before the vote, Franz won by a landslide, garnering more than 40 percent of some 60,000 votes.

He’s tipped to win around 11 percent in the first round on Friday and Saturday — not enough to make the runoffs. But he may end up kingmaker as the leading candidates — former prime ministers Jan Fischer and Milos Zeman — would be eager to pick up his following if the vote goes to a second round.

Karel Strachota, who organized the school ballot, said young people no longer identify with existing parties.

Franz is seen as “a candidate who is not tainted by politics,” Strachota said. “They look with sympathy at his nonconformity and the way he presents himself.”

And, perhaps surprisingly, few take issue with his tattoos.

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