Czech press survey - October 1

After the attack, the shooter leaves the place of the incident without Klaus´s bodyguards intervening. He meets journalists to tell them that he is a Communist, Spacek writes, describing the scene at a public ceremony in Chrastava, north Bohemia, on Friday.

Those inclining to theories of conspiration believe that either the government hired the shooter in order to discredit the Communists (KSCM), who are leading party popularity poll in the Liberec north Bohemian region before the Senate and regional elections, or that the Communists masterminded the provocation themselves to manifest the wrongs inflicted on them, Spacek says.

The weakest point of the conspiration theories is that they are meant seriously by their authors, he continues.

True, logically it is impossible that someone would be as silly as to go shooting with plastic pellets at the president, and that the president´s police bodyguards are so incompetent that they are incapable of stopping the offender, Spacek says.

In the Czech Republic, however, both is quite possible, he adds.

The embarrassing relations between Czech prime ministers and their old mother parties are noteworthy and they perfectly mirror Czech political parties´ "dysfunctional" nature, Martin Weiss writes in daily Lidove noviny.

Vaclav Klaus ostentatiously gave up the post of "his" Civic Democratic Party´s (ODS) honorary chairman. Milos Zeman is no longer a member of the Social Democratic Party (CSSD). The same is true of Stanislav Gross. Mirek Topolanek has fallen out with the ODS. Vladimir Spidla is the only former prime minister not to fall out with the party that nominated him to the top government post, Weiss writes.

In Czech politics, no one accepts the distribution of forces forever. Those defeated plan revenge and the winner knows it, therefore he must definitely destroy the defeated rivals. Battles have been waged irrespective of the nation´s interests. The cabinet can be toppled anytime, Weiss says.

The current speculations about the fall of Petr Necas´s (ODS) cabinet are a good example of such politics, which is incomprehensible from outside. The reasons presented by several ODS rebelling deputies (objections to the tax policy) are substitute ones, and their aims are absurd (what cabinet they long for?), but this only enhances the suspicion that the rebels are really ready to topple the cabinet, Weiss writes.

Maybe they are, maybe not, he adds.

After Vaclav Havel´s death, the Czech Republic lost much of its charm in the world´s eyes and foreign media mostly leave it unnoticed, Martin Weiss writes elsewhere in Lidove noviny, adding that from this point of view the two recent "episodes" involving Czech President Vaclav Klaus, which have won popularity on You Tube, are not so bad at all.

They are full of action and actually amusing and universally comprehensible, in view of the fact that in the former case (the secret snatching of a ceremonial pen by Klaus at a press conference in Chile), not much was at stake, while in the latter case (a man shooting at Klaus from a plastic gun), everything ended well, Weiss concludes.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz