News

The artistic council of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra has called for its newly appointed director Václav Kasík to resign. Members of the orchestra have also called on him to go, saying that the dismissal of the previous director and appointment of his replacement by the minister of culture have been completely unorthodox. Mr. Kasík, formerly director of public broadcaster Czech Radio, says he has no intention of stepping down but would not stand in the way of a competition being held for his post. The failure to hold such a competition is one of the main complaints about his appointment.

Some 15,000 polling stations around the country opened at 2 PM on Friday for Czechs to vote in a two-day general election to the lower house of Parliament. In the fifth general elections held since the country’s establishment in 1993, 25 parties are contesting 200 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Czech President Václav Klaus cast his vote in a Prague polling station on Friday afternoon; Social Demcorat leader Jiří Paroubek voted in Teplice, north Bohemia, where he’s heading his party ballot, and Civic Democrat leader Petr Nečas in his home town of Rožnov pod Radhoštěm in northern Moravia.

The polling stations will close for the night, and re-open on Saturday at 8 AM. Czechs have a chance to cast their ballots until 2 PM on that day. Around 8 million Czech citizens are entitled to vote in the general elections; in the last four years ago, the turnout was just below 65 percent.

The Czech foreigners police on Friday detained 33 members of the Hell’s Angels gang en route to Prague where the group is holding an international meeting over the weekend. The foreigners, 17 of whom are Norwegian citizens, had earlier been declared personae non gratae; they were detained in several locations and will now have to leave the country.

A police spokeswoman said some 200 people with 150 motorbikes arrived in Prague on Friday to take part in the meeting. This is the second time Hell’s Angels are meeting in Prague; they first came to the Czech capital in 2005.

The German-owned, Czech base carmaker Škoda Audo will have a new boss as of September, the company said on Friday. The current chair of Škoda’s board of directors, 58-year-old Reinhard Jung, will retire, and will be replaced by Winfried Vahnland, five years his junior. Mr Vahland, who joined the Volkswagen corporation in 1990, has been the head of the firm’s branch in China since 2005.