News

The Civic Democratic Party is holding a two-day conference at which it is expected to elect a new leadership. The first day of the conference is devoted to an analysis of the party’s lackluster performance in the recent general elections and its strategy in coalition talks on forming a centre-right government. Petr Nečas, who led the party to the elections, after the resignation of Mirek Topolánek in March of this year, is running for the top post, unchallenged. He said in an opening speech that the party had lost credibility, been damaged by corruption scandals and had failed to sell its policy programme to the public. Despite the party’s lackluster performance, the strong showing of two new parties, TOP09 and Public Affairs have given the Civic Democrats the chance to form a centre-right government, with Mr. Nečas expected to become the country’s next prime minister.

The Civic Democratic Party’s potential coalition partners TOP09 and Public Affairs attended the opening of the two-day conference as guests. In a short greeting to the assembly TOP 09 leader Karel Schwarzenberg said the three parties should put aside their differences and cooperate for the good of the country. Public Affairs leader Radek John called for a cleansing of Czech politics which would open the way for renewed public trust. He said it was time to show the Czech people that politics was a service to the public.

The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has lost and damaged important archive documents relating to the communist years, the daily Lidove Noviny writes in its Saturday edition. The paper says that documents relating to the case of Jan Palach, who set himself on fire in August of 1969 in protest of the Soviet occupation, and others on whom the communist police kept files are missing or incomplete. The paper puts this down to negligence in the way the documents were lent and handled as well as to their scanning for digitalization which often left pages torn and crumpled.

In his first interview since his appointment as governor of the Czech National Bank, Miroslav Singer, said that one of the biggest challenges in the months to come would be to respond adequately to the increasing demands for ever-greater regulation coming from the EC, and try to keep that regulation within reasonable bounds. Asked whether he thought the Czech Republic would join the eurozone during his six-year term in office, the governor said the question was highly speculative in view of the country’s finances which for the present time do not allow such a step.

President Klaus appointed Miroslav Singer to the post of central bank governor on Friday and he is due to take office on July 1. He replaces Zdeněk Tůma, who resigned in the spring saying it was time for a change of guard. Miroslav Singer has served as vice-governor of the central bank since 2005 and he worked as one of the directors of PricewaterhouseCoopers ČR before that.