{"id":13777,"date":"2024-09-29T13:56:21","date_gmt":"2024-09-29T11:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gnews.cz\/?p=13777"},"modified":"2024-09-29T15:14:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-29T13:14:07","slug":"former-president-milos-zeman-celebrated-his-80th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/politika\/exprezident-milos-zeman-oslavil-osmdesatiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Former President Milo\u0161 Zeman celebrated his 80th birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>HLUBOK\u00c1 NAD VLTAVOU, 28 September - Former Czech President Milo\u0161 Zeman celebrated his 80th birthday on Saturday. In addition to his loved ones, a number of Czech and foreign politicians arrived. Zeman invited his guests to the four-star \u0160tekl Hotel in Hlubok\u00e1 nad Vltavou and presented them with a copy of his last book, The Presidential Destiny, signed by him.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico arrived on Friday evening, accompanied by Defence Minister Robert Kali\u0148\u00e1k, and Slovak President Peter Pellegrini, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n, Polish President Andrzej Duda and other top representatives of European countries arrived on Saturday afternoon. Chinese Ambassador to the Czech Republic Feng Biao and his wife were also among the congratulators, who brought Zeman many thematic gifts from China and presented him with a congratulatory message from President Xi Jinping of the People's Republic of China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The gala dinner was also attended by Zeman's predecessor as President, V\u00e1clav Klaus, former Prime Minister and head of the ANO movement Andrej Babi\u0161, former Finance Minister Alena Schillerov\u00e1, ANO Vice-Chair Karel Havl\u00ed\u010dek, MEP Filip Turek, KS\u010cM Chair Kate\u0159ina Kone\u010dn\u00e1, Czech National Bank Governor Ale\u0161 Michl, and Zeman's son from his first marriage, David, a physician. In his speech, Zeman thanked some of those present by name and wished Babi\u0161 victory in the elections. The speech was delivered in English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About 200 people received the invitation, but Prime Minister Fiala did not. According to Zeman, they would look at each other with sour smiles, and that would be hypocritical. <em>\"A birthday is basically not only a celebration of age, but also a celebration of friendship. And after all, you do make a certain number of real friends in your 80s,\"<\/em> Zeman said in an interview with Terezia Tom\u00e1nkov\u00e1 on CNN Prima News. The celebration was organized by the Friends of Milo\u0161 Zeman association, whose chairman is former castle chancellor Vratislav Myn\u00e1\u0159.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Zeman, who has been active in politics since the 1990s, was chair of the Social Democrats' single-party minority government from 1998 to 2002. He ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2003. He was elected to the highest state office in 2013 in the first direct election of a head of state. He completed his second term as president on 8 March last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PHOTO Facebook M. Zeman \/ gnews.cz HeK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HLUBOK\u00c1 NAD VLTAVOU, 28 September - Former Czech President Milo\u0161 Zeman celebrated his 80th birthday on Saturday. In addition to his loved ones, a number of...<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13818,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[45,844,1245,458,570,303],"class_list":["post-13777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politika","tag-cr","tag-feng-biao","tag-milos-zeman","tag-robert-fico","tag-vaclav-klaus","tag-viktor-orban"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gnews.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}