WHAT'S ON BRITSKÉ LISTY

Dienstbier Voters, Unite!

9. 11. 2010 / Milan Daniel

Exactly 96706 Prague voters chose the Social Democratic party (ČSSD) at last month's municipal elections. That's a pretty decent number. And we can safely say that those people wanted an alternative to the other parties, particularly the governing center right Civic Democrats (ODS), which has riddled the Czech capital with corrupt patronage. The very same ODS with which a team from ČSSD is now negotiating the division of power in Prague. With the notable exception of local party leader Jiří Dienstbier, jr. (son of the famous homonimous dissident and former Foreign Minister), the other members of the Social Democratic negotiating team, Petr Hulinský and Karel Březina think ODS is "legible" and they "know well" their representatives, which cannot be said about TOP 09. Because of that, Dienstbier left the team.

A Czech version of this article is in CLICK HERE

And how could he not? As the online České noviny wrote, "Prague ČSSD's boss Petr Hulinský (...) earned at least 18,9 million Czech crowns in the past three years from city companies like Prague's gas and heat distributor. His colleague Karel Březina was awarded in the past a bunch of places in the supervisory boards of several companies. The most important of them is the Czech Railways, which he joined at the same time as the Czech Electric monopoly (ČEZ) director Martin Roman.

There is no doubt that both these Social Democrats would seldom have gotten such lucrative sinecure without some blessing from those who were in power, which were the exactly the Civic Democrats with whom they are now contemplating a coalition. The problem is that Social Democratic voters wanted that very party out from Prague's government. Would they be lenient to the same type of behavior patterns coming from their own party?

I don't think so. Nevertheless, it is a mystery to me why those 96706 voters are silent, while seeing the leader of the party they chose in the first place is being shoved out of the process, so as to not get on the way of his colleagues` profitable deals.

It is a mystery to me why those voters don't organize among themselves some kind of public demonstration in support of the correct and ethical, principled position of Dienstbier, jr. Especially these days, when thanks to the online social media such a gathering could be put together rather easily. It would be enough if every tenth Social Democrats` voter joined. I wonder why those voters don't make use of the imense power they hold, so as to fight for their interests.

Vytisknout

Obsah vydání | Sobota 10.12. 2016