Czech press survey - October 11

When the speculation about that the effort to prevent raising VAT is in fact a warning to the government not to poke its nose into the largest health insurance company, VZP, appeared a month ago, the rebels dismissed it, Kaiser writes.

But the information of the past few days paints a strange picture: on the one hand there is obstinate fixation to the state budget, on the other hand there is the notion as if the revenues of the public VZP were not at all connected with the state´s overall wealth, but were perhaps of a private character, Kaiser writes.

Why must former Central Bohemia governor David Rath stay in custody and lobbyist Marek Dalik may leave for Punta Arenas perhaps? It is a mystery, Petr Honzejk writes in Hospodarske noviny.

He writes that Rath is suspected of corruption worth dozens of millions of crowns. It is a sum with which he could not go into hiding until the end of his life.

Dalik, on the contrary, probably "worked" with hundreds of millions of crowns, with which it would be possible to go into hiding on the reverse side of the Moon perhaps, Honzejk writes.

Besides that, all important questionings have been carried out in Rath´s corruption case, but in the case of Dalik, a lot may still be somehow "arranged," Honzejk writes.

He says one would say at first sight that Dalik, not Rath should be in custody. It is only to be believed that the blind justice can see what others cannot, Honzejk writes.

Elsewhere in Hospodarske noviny Jindrich Sidlo asks whether former prime minister and chairman Mirek Topolanek, a close friend of Dalik, wants to indicate that there is a connection between Dalik´s case and the six ODS quasi-rebels when he says that Necas´s fear of Topolanek´s return and an effort at intimidating the rebels are behind Dalik´s detention?

Or better, does he indicate that the rebels are working for re-instating Topolanek at the head of the ODS? Sidlo asks.

He says Topolanek, however, does not figure in Dalik´s case. Dalik has been accused of asking for a 400 million crown bribe for the placing of a government order that he could not influence as a private person.

Yet, Topolanek says Dalik´s accusation is to be a weapon against himself. Does he want to say he guaranteed the promise Dalik made to the Americans? This would be a deed of a real man, Sidlo writes with irony.

($1=19.353 crowns)

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz