Czech press survey - September 10

One can only have a single piece of advice to the National Theatre: it should strike until the government finds a personality able to create a state cultural policy instead of the helpless Culture Minister Alena Hanakova, Karel Steigerwald writes in Mlada fronta Dnes.

In fact, there is no state cultural policy and no one is planning it. The National Theatre is in the same situation as before the Communist fall 22 years ago, Steigerwald writes.

There is a sad look at Hanakova. She cannot explain anything, she does not have any view, she is simply helpless, he adds.

However, she has nothing to explain and she is not the first from the succession of culture ministers who have been so helpless, Steigerwald writes.

She is doing exactly the same as her predecessors, he adds.

The candidates for the post of ND director should not take up the job until the Culture Ministry says what it really wants, Steigerwald, himself a playwright, adds.

This would be a good cultural act, Steigerwald writes.

The National Theatre is an institution worth a strike, he adds.

After Hanakova's public appearance on Czech Television on Friday it is obvious that the National Theatre can only be headed by a madman or a suicide, Jana Machalicka writes in Lidove noviny.

Hanakova's inability to head the Culture Ministry has been common knowledge, but now it surfaced in a horrific way, Machalicka writes.

Hanakova's statement that "wrongly set processes have led to other processes taking place wrongly" will certainly be publicised as a wonderful entertainment, but otherwise, there is nothing humorous in the situation, she adds.

The demand by heads of the National Theatre's artistic groups that Hanakova should step down is quite legitimate, Machalicka writes.

Maybe there are really good reasons to dismiss Cerny, but they are still unknown because Hanakova has been unable to tell them to the public, Jindrich Sidlo writes in Hospodarske noviny.

Besides, it may be also true that Hanakova herself does not know them either, Sidlo writes.

It is not common to ask a politician to resign after a bungled televised interview, but this time the exception must be made, he adds.

Now it would be best to trigger a process ending with Hanakova's departure, Sidlo writes, adding that this would be perhaps the best solution for her, too.

Hanakova will probably feel some relief. Doubly so if she remembers her counterpart from the TOP 09 deputies' group Vlasta Parkanova, former defence minister, who also pretended to head a ministry, Sidlo concludes.

Author: ČTK
www.ctk.cz