News

Rebel Civic Democrat MP Vlastimil Tlustý told Czech TV on Sunday that he and two of his fellow rebel Civic Democrats may join the opposition in Tuesday’s key vote of no confidence in the government. Mr Tlustý said “the cup has overflowed” and that the centre-right cabinet of Mirek Topolánek should end.

The opposition Social Democrats will attempt to bring down the government in a vote of no-confidence on Tuesday; the opposition had failed to do so on four previous occasions. The head of the Social Democrats, Jiří Paroubek, said that if the opposition succeeds, the cabinet of PM Topolánek should remain in power until the end of the Czech EU presidency in June.

The re-elected Social Democrat leader Jiří Paroubek has said his party will reject the extension of the Czech Army’s missions in Afghanistan. Mr Paroubek, who was re-elected the head of the opposition Social Democrats at a party’s congress in Prague on Saturday, said Social Democrats would follow the results of an inner-party poll in which 82 percent of the party’s local organizations said the missions should end, while 87 percent of them believe that the numbers of Czech troops in Afghanistan should decrease radically. The Czech Republic has more than 1,000 troops participating in the NATO ISAF mission in Afghanistan.

The three-day party congress, which concluded at Prague’s Industrial Palace on Sunday, also elected four deputy chairmen, including shadow foreign minister Lubomír Zaorálek and Brno mayor Roman Onderka. The Social Democrat party congress however failed, after several rounds of voting, to elect a fifth deputy, who must be a woman according to the party statutes; the remaining deputy chair will be appointed by party leadership.

The surrealist painting “Spící” (Sleeping) by the Czech modernist painter Toyen sold for the bidding price of 20 million crowns, or just over one million US dollars, at an auction in Prague on Sunday, fetching the second highest price in the history of Czech art auctions. The painting was created in 1937 by the painter Marie Čermínová, better known by her pseudonym Toyen, and sold to a family in England a year later. “Spící” is considered one of the most significant works of European surrealism, and a key painting in Toyen’s work. The painter, born in Prague in 1902, left Czechoslovakia for France after the communists took power in 1948, and died in Paris in 1980.

In an interview for the UK paper the Sunday Times, Czech President Václav Klaus said that the Lisbon treaty would make the European Union less democratic, it would make the decision-making process less transparent, and it would give more competences to Brussels at the expense of member states. Mr Klaus also denied having made a comparison between the European Union and the Soviet-era system in his address to the European Parliament last month; the president said the Czech experience with communism was valuable in that Czechs learnt that where there was no opposition and no tolerance to other points of view, there was is no freedom, either.