• 12/10/2006

    Mr. Cunek's election to the post of chairman has divided the Christian Democrats, some of whom see him as a highly controversial figure. The new party leader has fought off accusations of racism in recent weeks after evicting several hundred Roma rent-defaulters from the centre of Vsetin. However Jiri Cunek's supporters vastly outnumber his critics and they expect his election to give the party new impetus and possibly take it in a new direction. Many see him as a decisive and pragmatic politician who will boost the party's flagging credit ratings.

  • 12/10/2006

    Overall, politicians from rival parties have welcomed Mr. Cunek's election to the post of chairman. Pavel Bem, deputy chairman of the Civic Democrats, said he saw this as a step in the right direction. Zdenek Skromach, deputy chairman of the Social Democrats said Mr. Cunek's election was good news above all for the Christian Democrats since it would give the party a chance to recover from its slump. And Communist Party leader Vojtech Filip is hoping that Mr. Cunek's pragmatic attitude may help the Christian Democrats overcome their long-standing aversion towards the Communist Party. Political analysts are careful in their predictions but several have expressed the belief that Mr. Cunek's election could improve the party's ties with the Social Democrats.

  • 12/10/2006

    The Czech foreign minister Alexanader Vondra wants to appeal to the EU to show greater benevolence to Serbia and Turkey. At a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday the Czech delegation is planning to stress the need for Serbia to receive a positive signal from the EU ahead of its parliamentary elections in January. "Serbia should know that Europe has not abandoned it and that the EU supports the democratic forces in the country" the Czech foreign ministry's spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalova told the CTK news agency. Brussels broke off accession talks with the Serb Republic for allegedly not doing enough to apprehend war criminals.

  • 12/10/2006

    Aneta Langerova has been voted singer of the year in the Czech Nightingale Awards held on Saturday night. Langerova, the winner of the Czech Republic's first ever pop idol, defended last years title of best woman singer, beating Lucie Bila who was top of the ladder for several year in a row. In addition to that the young Langerova received the overall Czech Nightingale award - as singer of the year - a title that usually goes to the Czech singing legend Karel Gott. Mr. Gott received the best male singer award. Lucie Bila who came second in the women's category said she would work so hard next year she would make sparks fly.

  • 12/09/2006

    The Christian Democratic Party, the fourth biggest party in the lower house, elected a new leadership at its party conference in Brno on Saturday. The party's new chairman is senator Jiri Cunek, a politician whose name made headlines nationwide when as mayor of Vsetin he evicted several hundred Romany rent defaulters from the town centre in mid-October. A Roma organization is pressing charges of racism against him and some two dozen Romanies turned up to protest against his election outside the Brno conference hall. On the other hand there are many who praise senator Cunek for the decisive manner in which he dealt with rent-defaulters and observers say this may have helped him win a seat in the senate. Senator Cunek has called for party reform and his election to the post of chairman is expected to give the party a new direction.

  • 12/09/2006

    Talks on forming a new coalition government continue without the Green Party which announced its decision to withdraw from the talks on Friday because their programme priorities were allegedly not being taken into account. According to a press report released by the Social Democrats the three remaining parties - the Civic Democrats, Social Democrats and the Greens - are now discussing reforms in the areas of health care and security.

  • 12/09/2006

    There has been speculation as to the position of Jiri Paroubek, leader of the Social Democrats, following Thursday's announcement that another party deputy wanted to leave the deputies group in parliament. This would undermine the party's position in government talks. In recent weeks there have been signals that the party is divided over whether it should go into the opposition of fight for a place in government. There has even been speculation that the former party boss Milos Zeman, who is no longer active in politics, has been trying to organize a putsch against the current Social Democrat leader. Mr. Zeman has rejected the idea as nonsensical.

  • 12/09/2006

    A fifth of Czechs believe that only men should have the privilege of higher education. A poll conducted by the CVVM agency indicates that 18 percent of Czechs, mainly older people, still believe in the male-female division of labour according to which the man is the breadwinner and the woman's place is in the home. Despite this surprising outcome, the number of women graduating from Czech universities is on par with that of male graduates and the vast majority of Czech women work.

  • 12/09/2006

    The mother of a three year old boy who was killed when he fell out of a moving train earlier this year was found guilty of negligence. She received a one year suspended sentence in view of the fact that she is bringing up another underage child. The woman sent the little boy to the toilet unattended while she was tending to her daughter.

  • 12/08/2006

    Health Minister Tomas Julinek has said two committees of experts will be set-up to investigate circumstances at separate hospitals that employed alleged serial killer Petr Zelenka. On Friday the health minister visited one of the hospitals, the site where the murders took place. The accused has admitted to killing patients using lethal doses of the drug heparin in one of the country's worst serial murder cases. No murders reportedly took place at the second facility in Jihlava, where Zelenka was employed for only a short period. Controversy has surfaced in Mr Zelenka's case, over whether officials at the Havlickuv Brod hospital did enough to speed up involvement by police.

    Author: Jan Velinger

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