Czech press survey - August 8

He reacts to the recently surfaced photos featuring Topolanek and Dalik along with influential businessman on their joint, evidently expensive holiday in Tuscany.

Everyone has the right to spend holiday without being spied on. There is no reason to envy politicians resting in luxurious villas and yachts in Italy. Nor is there anything bad about politicians and businessmen spending holidays together, Kopecky writes.

The problem is whether Topolanek is obliged to someone as a result. He said he participated in the financial coverage of the Italian stay but no proof has been presented.

Nor is it known whether the villa in which Topolanek spent holiday belongs to a company that could benefit from Topolanek's decisions [as a politician], Kopecky writes.

A politician who allows businessmen and lobbyists to move too closely around him, himself tending to fog things or not to comment at all, should be ousted from the political scene, Kopecky concludes, probably alluding to the forthcoming general election.

He who prepared the scandal with photos of Topolanek and businessmen in Tuscany must have been a professional, it clearly ensues from the circumstances as described by Karel Randak, former Czech intelligence service chief who passed the photos to the media, Jaroslav Plesl writes in Lidove noviny.

Randak asserts he knows nothing about who might have initiated the scandal. Nevertheless, before the scandal erupted, Randak knew that Topolanek would be photographed by "a daily tabloid."

However, even the tabloid's name served as a cover up for a bigger action. Its editors received "an expedient info" so that photographs taken by a professional agency could be published, Plesl writes.

If Randak tells the truth, those who planned the scandal also counted on Randak's motivation. They must have known that Randak has many reasons to retaliate to Topolanek, Plesl writes.

A holiday allied politicians spend with businessmen is a scandal, of course. Nevertheless, an important question remains unanswered. Who took the photographs and on whose order? Plesl asks in conclusion.

Pravo's commentator Jiri Hanak, also discussing the politicians' luxurious holiday in Tuscany, states that Czech politicians still smack of parochialism and lack any sense of broad-mindedness.

During World War Two, the British government asked citizens to take austerity steps to save energy. The Royal couple went an example and people knew it. The King and the Queen even refused to leave London tormented by permanent Nazi air raids. On their part it was not an empty gesture but a display of responsibility towards their citizens, who highly appreciated it, Hanak writes.

Czech politicians are either "only" stupid or stupid and arrogant at the same time if they spend a luxurious holiday now that the Czech Republic is affected by the economic crisis, and on return they continue telling people about the general necessity for everybody to tighten their belts, Hanak writes.

This is tactlessness bordering on meanness, he adds.

Topolanek is now touring his elections region, south Moravia, in an effort to persuade people that he is the right guy to lead the country in the hard times. However, it did not occur to him to spend holiday in south Moravia as a gesture of solidarity with those who have to restrict their spending, Hanak writes.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz