News

A Czech court has acquitted former Czech police officer Tomáš Čermák on the charge of having attacked Kateřina Jacques, a Green Party official who is now a lower house deputy. Mr Čermák was accused of having beaten up Ms Jacques up when she protested against neo-Nazis demonstrating in Prague in May 2006. After the incident, which was partly caught on camera, Mr Čermák was sacked from the police and accused of abuse of power and inflicting bodily harm. The defence said that during the demonstration the defendant had repeatedly asked Jacques not to enter a zone where she would come into direct contact with attendees of the neo-Nazi rally. The defense had also argued that Jacques aimed to gain publicity ahead of a general election in June 2006.

The police have revealed that they apprehended a suspect - a former member of the criminal police – wanted for involvement in the theft of more than 500,000 crowns (the equivalent of around 28 thousand US dollars) in 2007. The suspect and two others have been taken into custody. The three allegedly robbed a Ukrainian national of the money.

Czech lawmakers are due to elect a new president on Friday in a joint session of the two houses of Parliament. President Vaclav Klaus is seeking reelection in the face of a challenge from Czech-American economics professor Jan Svejnar. The vote starts at 10 am with speeches by both presidential candidates, but risks being derailed by a disagreement between the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies and the 81-strong Senate over whether the vote should be secret or public. The Senate, dominated by the ruling Civic Democrats, wants a secret ballot while the Chamber of Deputies favours a public vote. The Czech Constitution does not specify how the vote should be held. Failure to agree on this important aspect could see the presidential election postponed indefinitely until a solution is found.

In related news, President Klaus has reacted to the stand-off between the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate by calling it a ‘ploy’ to prevent him from getting re-elected. He made the comments in an interview with Czech Radio on Thursday, adding that he saw a secret ballot as the only logical means of electing a president. Mr Klaus said that he couldn’t rule out that the election would be postponed, but said that he sincerely hoped that this would not be the case. He urged politicians to come to a swift agreement, warning that if they didn’t, the public may well lose patience. At the moment, the president is elected by politicians alone, though there is speculation that the next presidential election may be by direct vote.

The Czech National Bank raised the base interest rate on Thursday by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.75 percent, the highest value since April 2002. The move was caused by inflation which reached 6.5 percent in January; the Bank expects it will keep on rising. Economists say however that the January rise in inflation was a single event and that the inflation should drop to three to four percent during the year. The current rise in inflation has been caused by the increase in the prices of food, oil and other energies as well as rents. Despite the rise, the Czech interest rate is currently the lowest in the European Union.

In related news, the Czech National Bank lowered its estimate of Czech economy growth in 2008 to 4.1 percent. The Bank’s estimate is more pessimistic than that by the Czech Finance Ministry which had previously estimated that the Czech economy will only grow by 4.7 percent.