Markéta Šichtářová and Vladimi Pikora pictured in 2011
Photo: Profimedia
Published: 26/08/2024
Economist and candidate for the Senate for the Free Party, Markéta Šichtařová, publicly accused her still legal husband – economist Vladimír Pikora, with whom she is in divorce proceedings, of years of violence and intimidation. According to her claims, Pikora was supposed to terrorize not only her, but also their seven children, whom he allegedly forced to perform humiliating »purification« rituals for a period of ten years. Šichtařová also talks about the rudeness, which she said she originally considered to be a sign of her still-husband’s serious illness. Pikora, who is running for Motorists, strongly objected to these claims, calling them manipulative to gain publicity before the elections. The editors of ŽivotvČesku.cz obtained his statement, and at the same time approached a top expert through political marketing.
Šichtařová in a comprehensive interview for the magazine She Today she described a ten-year period when, according to her, she faced difficulties with Pikora. She claims that her still-husband suffers from a condition that has led him to an extreme obsession with cleanliness. This was allegedly manifested in the fact that he forced the whole family to follow strict and unusual rules, including two-hour purification rituals, because he thought that many objects were “radioactive”.
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“However, whenever someone returned from outside, they had to undergo a humiliating purification ritual to decontaminate themselves from radioactivity. He had to strip naked between the doors, hop on one leg into the bathroom, where someone else had to turn on the water tap with the index finger of his right hand, counting to a hundred, then the water had to be turned off with the index finger of the other hand, and they had to wash themselves in the shower and decontaminate hair. All this was supervised by the partner,” the economist described in an interview for the aforementioned periodical.
According to the words of Šichtařová, who has recently appeared quite often in connection with her candidacy for the Senate in the media, physical violence should also have occurred.
In her story in the interview, she incorporated the alleged events that should have also involved the joint children. Specifically, they claim that the husband, for example, twice threw a glass of water at their daughter, which shattered and cut her. The daughter was then to be forced, naked and injured, to clean up the shards.
When asked why she decided to speak now, Šichtařová stated that she decided to speak only after a certain period of time when she was coming to terms with the events she had experienced. She explained that at the first stage she was not able to talk about it at all, and when she started to share her experience with loved ones, it was not easy to tell everything. However, she gradually found that she had to talk about her story because the lack of information led people to judge her. Some did not understand why she was taking care of seven children alone, others even reversed the roles and confused the victim with the aggressor. “He keeps spreading bizarre rumors that I’m the aggressor and he’s the victim. And that’s another reason I’m going out with it“, among other things, she stated for the aforementioned periodical.
The editors of ŽivotvČesku.cz were interested in whether the published story of Šichtařová, which in some stages seems more cinematic, is a suitable element of a PR campaign before the elections. Some passages of the interview are based on hard-to-believe claims that »I wasn’t allowed to do normal things and use the phone because everything was contaminated with radiation«.
Further on in the interview, Šichtařová claims that she managed several of her companies from home – in 2004 she founded her own analytical and consulting company Next Finance, where she still operates today. In the context of a marketing perspective, the editors contacted a top expert in political marketing.
“Nowadays, especially for politicians running for office typically for the Senate, campaigns are very personalized. This means that you base it entirely on the personality of a particular person. With this trend, politicians get into the media as persons in the sense that the more you know about the politician, the more you feel you know him on a personal level. And the more you tend to trust that politician. Opening up to the public as an individual politician’s strategy is functional in the long term, the question is where the line is, where each candidate is willing to go,” said consultant Karel Komínek from the Institute of Political Marketing for ŽivotvČesku.cz, saying that a certain part of the public can identify with a similar story, because they may have experienced similar things.
Economist Pikora, who was affected by Šichtařová’s interview, according to the voice in the phone call, told ŽivotvČesku.cz that he would not comment on the matter in more detail after consulting with a legal representative.
In particular, he emphasized that he does not understand why joint children are being dragged by the media. He emphasized that abusing them for a campaign as part of a political candidacy is completely incomprehensible to him. After the agreement, he sent his position on the matter to the editorial office.
“In response to the published interview, which I believe is part of an obvious PR campaign by my still-wife, who is currently running for the Senate, and with whom I am in divorce proceedings, I would like to state that I will not comment on these defamatory and misleading claims for the time being. Since our children are inappropriately involved in the whole thing, after consulting with my legal representative, I am considering taking legal action to protect not only my name, but above all the privacy and interests of my children from this purposeful and manipulative campaign,” Pikora wrote in his statement for ŽivotvČesku.cz.
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