Czech press survey - February 15

An active pro-employment policy is rather ineffective due to the low demand. Jobs need to be created by the private sector as the state is inefficient and full of people connected with fields without good prospects, Weiss says.

The state should improve the legal and administrative framework but it has failed in it.

What can be done in a situation where the Czech advantages - healthy banks, the country´s own currency and cheap loans - do not produce economic activity? Weiss asks.

Business lacks imagination and traditional producers who managed to cope with the crisis had to reduce their personnel and there are not enough new fields, he writes.

Presidential candidate Jan Fischer made many mistakes and he still cannot understand that media and his opponents attacked his weak points, in other words, he is unable to grasp how politics is working even after the end of his election campaign, Martin Zverina says elsewhere in Lidove noviny.

On the other hand, Fischer was one of the candidates who had tens of millions on his election account and his campaign was relative transparent, Zverina writes.

He says it would be bad if he ran in debts due to his campaign because it would support the widely held view that decent people can only go bankrupt in Czech politics.

Media reported on Wednesday that Fischer owed more than seven million crowns due to unpaid invoices related to his campaign.

But Fischer revealed for the others the real motivation of his biggest sponsor, steel magnate Tomas Chrenek.

The fact that Chrenek did not give Fischer the money he promised him after Fischer did not advance to the second round shows that Chrenek acted not as a sponsor but as an investor, Zverina concludes.

The worst thing that could happen to the Czech Republic is the so-called Russian syndrome, or that young, educated and active people are leaving their homeland because they arrive at the conclusion that life is not good for them there, Alexandr Mitrofanov writes in Pravo.

Young people will organise the celebration of Vaclav Klaus´s departure from the Presidential Office in March, he recalls.

One of the organisers, Jan Latal, recommended before the first round of the direct presidential election that people vote for leftist Jiri Dienstbier or rightist Karel Schwarzenberg, not for Jan Fischer or Milos Zeman, Mitrofanov says.

Neither Latal nor his allies succeeded in their effort, he adds.

These young people have been against politics and especially against parties. The mock celebration event rejoicing over Klaus´s leaving indicates that they maintain this stance, Mitrofanov writes.

But the left-wing part of this group of active young people has voiced the opinion that a non-party socialist milieu must be formed that would exert pressure on the Social Democrats (CSSD) so that the party does not give up humanism and democracy as its principles, he says.

Schwarzenberg says he believes in the young generation that will understand that it has to start developing politics itself, Mitrofanov writes.

($1=19.044 crowns)

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz