News

Czechs are going to the polls on Friday and Saturday in elections to decide on almost all of the country’s regional assemblies and a third of the seats in the Senate. A second round of voting will take place next weekend in Senate elections in which no candidate takes more than 50 percent of the vote. The elections are being seen as a test for the biggest party in the coalition government, the Civic Democrats, who now control 12 of 13 regional assemblies and hold a Senate majority. The coalition government faces a no-confidence vote next Wednesday.

Meanwhile, politicians casting their votes on Friday urged Czechs to take part in the voting process: Senate and regional elections in the Czech Republic traditionally have a lower voter turn out than parliamentary elections.

Prices on the Prague Stock Exchange slumped on Friday, pulling the headline index down by 10.20 percent to a four-year low of 842.8 points while other European equities gained ground in volatile trade. Coal miner NWR led the decline, shedding 20.58 percent. Czech bank Komerční banka, controlled by Societe Generale, fell by 17.75 percent, forcing the market to suspend trading at one point, while Austria's Erste Bank lost 15.16 percent.

The number of suspects wanted for the hijacking of a transport truck on the Czech Republic’s D5 highway recently is almost certainly higher than originally reported, a police spokeswoman has said. The truck was hit for 6 million crowns’ worth of cigarettes by individuals posing as police officers and customs officials. Earlier reports had damages estimated at half that amount and said that only three men were involved in holding up the truck and off-loading its cargo into nearby vehicles. The suspects are at large. The case is the second of its type on the D5 in the last two years.

Writer Milan Kundera has issued a statement, saying he was not given the chance to react to allegations he informed on someone nearly six decades ago, before the story was published by the Czech magazine Respekt. On Monday Respekt quoted a 1950 police record which says Mr Kundera reported the presence in Prague of a Czech-born foreign agent, leading to the man being sentenced to a long term in the uranium mines. For its part, the magazine says the world renowned author declined the opportunity to give his side of the story. Milan Kundera, who now lives in France, has described the allegations as lies. Meanwhile, literary historian Zdeněk Pešat has issued a statement saying Miroslav Dlask, a friend of the writer’s in his student days, admitted before his death that it was he who informed on the agent.