Czech press survey - January 19

Bem asked for the suspension of his ODS membership last spring after the release of his phone calls with lobbyist Roman Janousek, who calls himself "a political businessman", showing how much space Bem as mayor gave to Janousek´s political business, Zlamalova writes.

Is there anything that might make the ODS bad reputation even worse? she asks.

She says the ODS suffered a crushing defeat in the regional and Senate elections last autumn, three ODS rebels gave up their MP´s mandates in exchange for lucrative posts and Roman Pekarek replaced one of the rebels in parliament shortly before Pekarek was sentenced for corruption. Moreover, PM and ODS leader Petr Necas made LIDEM leader Karolina Peake defence minister in December and then sacked only after a few days, Zlamalova adds.

The Necas´s coalition government seems to be able to survive for a long time because Peake´s LIDEM would make any concession for a share in power, Bem returned to the government camp and a group of MPs around former education minister Josef Dobes will back the government in exchange for financial support to the movement promoting sports that Dobes´s group founded, Zlamalova writes.

But the perspectives of the Civic Democratic Party seem much worse, she concludes.

Political pragmatist Michal Hasek (Social Democrats, CSSD) made the Association of Czech Regions approve a declaration of support for the presidential candidate Milos Zeman because he risks nothing by it and he can only profit from it, Martin Zverina says elsewhere in Lidove noviny.

Hasek, South Bohemian regional governor and CSSD first deputy chairman, controls the Association as all but two regions have left-wing self-rule bodies, Zverina notes.

If Zeman loses in the presidential contest, Hasek will lose nothing. If Zeman wins, he will help Hasek gain more influence in the CSSD in exchange for various services, Zverina writes.

He says everybody can see how outgoing President Vaclav Klaus, former ODS long-standing chairman, managed to weaken the Civic Democrats.

He points out that Klaus is certainly not so vengeful as Zeman, former CSSD leader who repeatedly says that a part of CSSD MPs betrayed him in 2002 and who established his own party.

Outgoing President Klaus used the stupid argument that a person who did not spend his whole life in the country should not be president because Klaus wanted to discourage Czechs from casting their votes for Karel Schwarzenberg in the presidential election next week, Jiri Hanak writes in Pravo.

According to this argument, former German social democrat leader Willy Brandt should have never become German chancellor, Hanak says, adding that Brandt fought against the Nazis 13 years abroad.

Hanak writes that German Klaus-like right-wingers criticised Brandt as a Norwegian partisan.

Klaus´s son Vaclav Klaus Jr. even wrote on his blog that Schwarzenberg´s father collaborated with the Nazis. This is nothing but foul crap, Hanak says.

He says Schwarzenberg´s father helped organise a petition of loyalty of Czech aristocrats in 1938, calling on then president Edvard Benes to defend the country´s borders against the Nazi Germany.

The Nazis imposed forced administration on the property of Schwarzenberg´s father and Benes decorated him for participation in the resistance movement after the war, Hanak writes.

Schwarzenberg helped Czechoslovak freedom when he was in his involuntary exile, Hanak says.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz