Interior minister says banning Communist Party would not be solution

The country’s Interior Minister Ivan Langer has said that a banning of the country’s Communist Party by the Supreme Administrative Court would only prompt its members to re-form under a different name. He made the comment during a TV debate programme on Sunday. A Senate committee investigating the Communist Party’s status had petitioned the government to send the matter to court. But the interior minister made clear a ban would not be a solution; he also indicated that the matter will still be examined by the government before it reaches a decision. Responding on the same programme, Mr Langer’s predecessor František Bublan stressed it would be difficult to find anything in the Communist Party’s statutes that violated the law. The issue of banning has been in the headlines largely because of the ultra right-wing Workers’ Party - which faces possible dissolution. A court decision there is to be taken in March.