Czech CSSD may introduce waiting time for membership applicants

These measures are debated in reaction to mass recruitment of new members in the CSSD branch in Bilina, north Bohemia, where some 100 people applied for membership at once.

However, only a party congress can decide on changes in the CSSD statutes in this respect.

Paroubek explained that during waiting time an applicant for membership would have to pay membership fees, undergo an introductory training and submit clean criminal records.

"He might have a guarantor, too, this is no bad measure at all. It cities it is almost impossible, but in a village people naturally known each other. They know who has stolen fruit from a garden, such a person is not suitable as a CSSD member," Paroubek elaborated.

The pre-November 1989 Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC) applied a similar system of new members' admission. An applicant became first a candidate for membership with two guarantors and only after two-year waiting time, when he fulfilled party tasks, the final decision on his membership was made.

The debate on changes in the party statutes was stirred up by recent controversial cases in the CSSD branches in north Bohemia that were highlighted in media.

In Decin, north Bohemia, businessman Horacek was luring new CSSD members. According to daily Mlada fronta Dnes, he promised students invitations to parties and a possibility to drive a luxury limousine if they joined the CSSD.

In the Bilina organisation some 100 people applied for membership at once, but the organisation refused to admit most of them in the end.

Similar attempts to control a party organisation by expedient recruitment of new members are called "whaling".

The CSSD's rival, the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), has also met with such cases in north Bohemia.

The CSSD executive committee today did not take position on the case of Karel Vrba, deputy head of the Usti nad Labem, north Bohemia, regional party branch, who was convicted of robbery, corruption and causing bodily harm twice, according to media.

The CSSD presidium only recommended on Friday that the Usti organisation's leadership hear Vrba, and if he failed to explain the case, he should leave the party post.

Autor: ČTK
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