News

Dana Kuchtová, deputy chairwoman of the Green Party, has announced she will challenge Martin Bursík for the party’s top post at an extraordinary party conference in September. She has been one of Mr Bursík’s most vocal critics, accusing the Greens leader of autocratic practices and claiming that he was not doing enough to defend the party’s policy programme within the governing coalition. At a press conference in Prague on Wednesday Dana Kuchtová said that the Greens had veered too far right, when they should rightly be a centrist party. Party leader Martin Bursík, who has come under a lot of pressure from both inside and outside the party, recently called an extraordinary conference at which he plans to run for re-election in order to boost his mandate ahead of crucial votes in Parliament.

The winning design for a new national library building by the renowned Czech-born architect Jan Kaplický will not be built on Prague’s Letná Plain, Culture Minister Václav Jehlička told reporters after a government meeting on Wednesday. The minister cited financial reasons, saying the state could only afford to pay 2 billion for the new building while Kaplický’s design would require four billion. Kaplický’s design, a nine storey building, dubbed “the blob” has divided the public as well as experts and politicians. Critics say its avant-garde design would ruin Prague’s sky-line.

The Czech government on Wednesday approved a memorandum of understanding between the Czech Republic and the steel giant ArcelorMittal, ending all their disputes. Under the agreement, ArcelorMittal will withdraw all its suits against the Czech Republic in which it demanded 26 billion crowns, and the Czech Republic, will, in turn, sell an 11-percent stake in the largest Czech steel maker ArcelorMittal Ostrava to ArcelorMittal. The Czech Republic will gain 6.8 billion crowns from the shares sold. ArcelorMittal now holds over 71 percent shares in ArcelorMittal Ostrava.

Police are gearing up for a skinhead march in the town of Svitava, east of Prague on Saturday. Some 200 far-right activists are expected to march through the town centre to protest against a court ruling that sent one of their mates to 17 years in prison last year for a racially motivated murder. Vlastimil Pechanec was found guilty of stabbing to death a Romany man with whom he’d got into a verbal conflict. Pechanec had been sentenced for violence previously. In the late 90s he spent two years in jail for attacking a young Romany with a knife. In May of 2001 he spent 14 months behind bars for attacking two anarchists. A number of skinhead rallies have already been held in protest against the most recent verdict.