Czech press survey - November 11

This is the moment in which professionals who have passed through "a special-character (Communist) party " and who are ready to pursue their career under any regime emerge, Leschtina writes.

The selection of a candidate for an EU commissioner would be a banal thing if it did not reflect so strongly the awkwardness and poverty of the two strongest parties, the Civic Democrats (ODS) and the Social Democrats (CSSD), Jiri Hanak writes in Pravo.

Fuele's selection for the post is naturally a defeat for the ODS because Fuele was a Communist party official, which the ODS minded in the former CSSD government's candidate Pavel Telicka, Hanak writes.

He says the selection is no bright moment for the CSSD either.

The party sent to Brussels five years ago a man who resigned when he found out that he cannot communicate in Czech there. He was replaced by Telicka who had to resign because the party needed to get rid of its chairman and former prime minister Vladimir Spidla, Hanak writes.

He says that though he did well in Brussels, the current CSSD leadership traded him for Fuele in order to accommodate the ODS (hat is opposed to Spidla) for the sake of a future profit.

Czech politics is split, but not along the right-left line, Karel Steigerwald writes about Fuele's selection for EU commissioner in Mlada fronta Dnes.

There is a yawning gap between what is good, advantageous, tactical for a politician and what is good for society, Steigerwald writes.

He says the trend towards alliances with the Martians started by Social Democrat chairman Jiri Paroubek is successful on all fronts.

Politicians are changing into Martians, officers have Nazi symbols on their helmets instead of the sickle and hammer, and doctors's degrees are pouring down from heaven, Steigerwald writes with irony about what has been going on in the country recently.

"Compared with this, the expert form Moscow (Fuele) is eventually quite tolerable," Steigerwald adds.

The dissatisfaction with Mirek Topolanek in the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) cannot be overlooked since not even his allies are any more capable of denying it, Martin Weiss writes in Lidove noviny.

"However, they eventually helplessly shrug their shoulders: there is nobody else!" Weiss writes.

He says this failure of the party is worse than any of Topolanke's individual failures because one of the main functions of parties is "to generate leaders," Weiss writes.

No new leader can, however, grow up in a situation where the key to advancement is the favour of behind-the-stage shady businessmen who control the party more and more and who plant their people in posts, Weiss writes.

He says Topolanek allegedly complains of having lost control of local godfathers. He cannot, however, shake off responsibility for this system, Weiss writes.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz