How Long Will Czechs Accept This?

9. 3. 2010 / Daniel Strož

Let's start immediately with the newest and, although for us unexpected repulsive remarks from Austrian president Heinz Fischer (from their Social Democrats), who by the way is just about to become a candidate for re-election, at the annual event that remembers the tragic ending of the general strike by the Sudetenland Germans in March 1919, when they were already protesting against their incorporation to the new Czechoslovak state, he attacked the validity of the so-called Beneš Decrees.

The Austrian president said, among other things, that the decrees are deeply unjust and thus the other member states of the European Union should not legalize it. He went even further over the limits with his speech, when he declared that he will advocate the respect for human rights not only in his country, but also beyond their borders. Which borders he was thinking about is perhaps not necessary to say.

The reaction of our Czech representatives was as usual very careful and even that way it still supposedly made their Austrian counterparts "feel bad in their stomachs", as said one message.

The most courageous came perhaps from the deputy chairman of the Communist Party (KSČM) Stanislav Grospič, who -- expressing the official view of his party, printed in their daily newspaper Haló noviny, explained why are the decrees Beneš signed important, as well as what the Austrian president improperly put in doubt in terms of their legality. Grospič didn't leave off even the perpetual "political and property" requests from the Sudetenland landsmanšaft and from part of their backers occasional attempts to influence the Treaty of Lisbon, which the Czech communist party initially rejected. Rather curious, though, is that the same Haló noviny had published an article not long before judging the both cases from an almost opposite view.

Over the question "How long will Czechs accept this?" pertains at this moment even discrimination at the Schengen agreement. Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Kohout supposedly, together with his Austrian counterpart Quido Westerwell, arrived a consensus that, although there is "no violation of the Schengen agreements, but in many cases it may happen that its spirit is not considered". It seems that Austrians, who lately had stopped for a while with bothering Czechs, "liked it" so much that a few days ago they openly dislocated to our borders special police forces, whose task is to "protect the population from unspecified criminal elements from the East".

Citizens of the Czech Republic should decide, especially now that there will be general elections, in May, about their politicians, and also very carefully think about themselves as well, about what they want to allow themselves to be forced to accept or not, in what kind of state they wanna live in.

Czechs should realize that our country has a low international level of prestige, thanks to our suffocating corruption and criminality, besides in what bad a light it presents itself to its European Union surroundings. That what they saw last from our environment were drastic pictures of some private militia from the electric company ČEZ during some action of protection of controllers (debt collectors?) I myself watched the news about it in various German television stations, one French and also on Euronews.

When I -- still during my days as a member of the European Parliament -- voted to lift away the immunity of [former TV boss being investigated for tax evasion] deputy Vladimir Železný, all my colleagues from other countries were in shock by the fact that a person with so many court processes running against him could get to the European parliament at all.

At the same time it is said (but not proven) that there are some Czech members of the European parliament who employ in consultancy levels people who own or in the past owned companies, which also had similar commandos. And where there were shootings and people actually died!

Until this -- at the moment only suspicion -- gets confirmed we shouldn't get surprised if we fall even closer to the ground in the scale of credibility of our nation.

What Czechs should also not accept is the unending, wearing down discussions about the so-called collaboration with the Communist regime. These arguments helped shatter our society. If we focus on the current troubles surrounding the newly chosen director for the Institute for the Study of the Totalitarian Regime, we can't but conclude that things are upside down, for we certainly know how many were those who studied at communist-socialist-Marxist-Leninist schools or were members of communist youth organizations and regardless of that are working in high functions, even the highest...

As one of the recently accuses complained in a TV show: even former dissident Václav Havel was recorded by the former regime's secret police in some sort of cooperation, so if we followed this course of judgment he could not have been president.

Twenty years after the overthrow of the former system citizens of the Czech Republic should finally remember that and now allow themselves to be fooled by people who have totally discredited the meaning of the word "politician" and many even transformed it in a simple tool how to get some nice money.

I remember the beginning of 1989, when my fellow countryman used to say, with apprehension: "if this whole thing here explodes, nobody will be able to put it back together". Well, we found some people, but they didn't convince. We now need some new personalities, that's how democracy works. But important is to choose them based on their expertise, not whether their possible contacts with the previous regime.

Let's look at Greece these days. People there are saying, what on our Czech public television, for example, you will not hear: "make those politicians who brought this catastrophe over us be the ones to bare responsibility and pay the price for it".

Vytisknout