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The Czech parliament and a number of other government institutions will face higher budget cuts than anticipated. The lower house’s budget committee decided on Wednesday that the chamber has to cut its expenses by over 29 million crowns, nearly twice as much as a figure previously suggested. The new proposal was backed mostly by members of the government coalition. The head of the budget committee, Pavel Suchánek of the Civic Democrats, said that while some institutions may find the new cuts difficult, not approving them would have sent the wrong signal to other bodies which have already seen their budgets reduced.

Czech President Václav Klaus awarded the left-leaning economist Valtr Komárek with the president’s golden plaque at Prague Castle on Wednesday. Mr Komárek’s, who is considered the country’s doyen of social democracy, received the honor on his 80th birthday. Both Mr Klaus and Mr Komárek were members of the first government after the fall of communism in 1989. Their views on how to transform the country’s economy, however, differed vastly. While Mr Klaus advocated a free market economy, Mr Komárek pleaded for a more leftist approach. Mr Komárek was a member of the Communist Party until 1990 and worked as an adviser to Che Guevara, who at the time was Cuba’s minister of industry, in the 1960s.

According to a poll published by the internet-based agency SANEP, almost forty percent of Prague residents surveyed would like to see former director of the Czech National Bank Zdeněk Tůma take the post of Prague mayor. Mr Tůma is running for the conservative TOP 09 party, which was founded less than a year ago, but in the last lower house elections won the most votes in the capital, which used to be a Civic Democrat bastion. Public Affairs’ candidate Markéta Reedová took the second place with 26.4 percent, while ten percent of survey participants said they were still undecided. The Civic Democrats have not yet presented their candidate for the office of Prague mayor and aren’t planning to do so until the end of September.

Czech Minister of Defense Alexandr Vondra said on Wednesday that a recent leak of names of several communist-era secret police agents, some of whom allegedly are still active, did not constitute a threat to the country’s military intelligence. Mr Vondra added that no current members were among the names of communist spies, which appeared on the website of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian regimes in April and remained online for several weeks. The daily Mladá fronta dnes reported last week that the list included names of agents still active abroad and alleged that they may face serious threats to their safety following the publication of their names.