Czech press survey - February 11

He adds that the desperate situation of the senior ruling Civic Democrats (ODS) has been in focus for long. However, is the CSSD´s position much better? Weiss asks.

He recalls that the CSSD presidential candidate Jiri Dienstbier did not advance to the second round and CSSD voters preferred Milos Zeman, former CSSD PM who left the party a couple of years ago.

Moreover, Zeman´s new Party of Citizens' Rights (SPOZ), whose honorary chairman he is now, deprived the CSSD of the victory in the mid-2010 general election by attracting a decisive part of CSSD voters.

Weiss writes that the right wing has been governing in the country for more than two election terms in a row and the crisis lasts and will last.

Consequently, the CSSD automatically scores points for being a leftist opposition party. However, as soon as it assumes power again, the tension within the party will become apparent and its popularity may be plummeting like under its former ill-famed chairman Stanislav Gross, Weiss writes in LN.

The recent Czech presidential election has divided the society in political and cultural terms but is seems that the opposition to the establishment has united it again, Lukas Jelinek writes in Pravo today.

During the run-off presidential duel between Milos Zeman and Karel Schwarzenberg, the society was split into the two candidates´ camps, the towns stood up against the countryside, the young against the old and the rich against the poor, Jelinek says.

However, he adds, the following events have confirmed that the split is not so serious. Schwarzenberg´s election team called on his supporters to respect president-elect Zeman as a new head of state, and even President Vaclav Klaus has become a proponent of the "Truth and Love," Jelinek writes, hinting at Klaus´s words on Zeman´s victory citing a modified slogan of his predecessor Vaclav Havel.

Paradoxically enough, those who are ruling in the country help cement the split society, Jelinek notes.

The indignation at the controversial presidential amnesty that has set free a number of corruption and financial crime perpetrators as well as other steps taken by those in power have united the plebs with the elites and Klaus´s popularity is plummeting, Jelinek writes.

The Czech Republic may face another strike of doctors in 2013 as no real health car reforms have been implemented since the previous mass protests of health care staff in 2011, Julie Hrstkova writes in Hospodarske noviny (HN) today.

While several thousand hospital doctors threatened with a strike for higher salaries as from March 2011, two years later "merely" a strike of outpatient specialists is being prepared. However, it cannot be ruled out that hospital doctors may join them since hospitals are short of money and the promises of raising their pay have mostly not been fulfilled, Hrstkova says.

One can simply blame the crisis for the lack of funding. The Czech Republic is not alone in Europe to cut expenditures in health care, Hrstkova says.

Under the current circumstances, the decrease in doctors´ salaries might be considered a marginal problem in the overall desperate state of the health care system.

"If the Czech Republic is interested in a high-quality health care, it must quickly launch real reforms. Preferably the first day after the elections. A day later it will be too late as the practice shows," Hrstkova writes in conclusion.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz