Czech press survey - February 13

While most analyses wonderfully agree that the crusade against Islamists in Mali will be rapidly over and this will be no new Afghanistan, it is clear that it will not be so and it can easily become another Afghanistan, Vodicka writes.

One can easily imagine that the enormous desert expanses and bush will be part of a Sahelistan, an uncontrollable area of the size of Europe in which the Islamists will be as elusive as Taleban members, he adds.

The leading politicians should tell the general public that it is not true that Czechs have no interests in Mali. Czechs will be there because there are those we need for our own safety's sake. They do need not us, but we need them. This is why it is advantageous to be with them in case we may need to be protected, too, Vodicka writes.

President-elect Milos Zeman's proposal that he will spend one-third of his salary on the repayment of the national debt is a popular gesture, Karel Steigerwald writes in Mlada fronta Dnes.

However, people will like less it if asked themselves to pay the same third from their own salaries, Steigerwald writes.

State debts must be paid sooner or later, but the governments have postponed the repayment, pushing before them tens of billions of interests, he adds.

Zeman's gesture is a popular drop in the sea. It would be more efficient to draft state budgets without debts. Socialists like the theories about the benefits of debts, but Zeman should explain to them that debts are harmful, Steigerwald writes.

The search for a real statesmen on the Czech political scene is continuing, Alexandr Mitrofanov writes in Pravo.

Neither outgoing President Vaclav Klaus nor his predecessor Vaclav Havel have proceeded to become real statesmen as they only embodied extreme positions in politics, Mitrofanov writes.

Klaus's indifference to more or less authoritarian regimes was always criticised by Havel's proponents, he adds.

However, Havel himself often all too eagerly agreed with everything coming from the Big Brother from overseas, encouraging him to be even more aggressive, Mitrofanov writes in a veiled reference to Havel's support to NATO air strikes in the Kosovo war in 1998-1999.

As a result, the Czech general public only waits for a real statesman able to cross the bounds of narrow-mindedness.

Zeman has a theoretical chance of becoming one. If he tried to play the role, it may be interesting, to say the least, Mitrofanov writes.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz