Quid pro quo in Brno

No. 2576
Fri., March 18, 2011
A daily e-mail bulletin of Czech wit & wisdom. For your free subscription, write to [email protected]
Quid pro quo in Brno
Bohuslav Sobotka is the current Czech politician most often linked directly to major privatization scandals. As of today's ČSSD congress in Brno, he faces criminal
complaints in the IPB deal and the OKD privatization. It's no coincidence that the
main beneficiaries of these two deals, ČSOB in the first case and Zdeněk Bakala in
the second, are in his corner in the battle for the ČSSD chairmanship. They're joined
there by such notables as Jan Švejnar (who is ČSOB's supervisory board chairman),
Radek Pokorný (who has lobbied for both) and, less directly, by Václav Havel. Sobotka's rival, Michal Hašek, has a strong support team too, including Václav Klaus,
Vít Bárta, Petr Kellner, Tomáš Hrdlička, Jaromír Soukup and Jaroslav Tvrdík. Today's
congress is often presented as a battle over the direction of Social Democracy, but it's
more a matter of which clan will get its claws deeper into the country's social fabric.