News

Frantisek Dohnal is likely to be the new head of the Supreme Audit Office.

Dohnal, whose candidacy was proposed by the Christian Democrats, won overwhelming support from deputies in the Lower Chamber. His nomination will now be put to President Vaclav Klaus. The post of president of the Supreme Audit Office has been vacant since June of 2003 when Lubomir Volejnik died in office. Since then Parliament has been unable to agree on who should replace him.

Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek has called for a meeting with the heads of the country's two leading commercial TV stations Nova and Prima. Both stations commission opinion polls during TV discussion programmes to assess what participant is considered more trustworthy among the general public. Results of a poll on a discussion between Mr Paroubek and the leader of the opposition Civic Democrats Mirek Topolanek last Sunday suggested that the prime minister only won over 36 percent of respondents. Mr Paroubek says a separate poll commissioned by his party, the Social Democrats, suggested over 50 percent of public support and accuses the TV stations of "a scandalous attempt to manipulate public opinion".

The opposition right-of-centre Civic Democrats have called for a special meeting of the lower house of parliament to discuss its proposed restitution bill. Put forward in July, the bill pushes back the deadline by which people, who have a right to ask the state to return their property, make their claims. They currently only have until the end of the year. The Civic Democrats, who propose to push the deadline back to December 2009, argue the current law gives those affected little time to make their case and no chance to apply for compensation.

Deputy health minister David Rath has said that the largest state-owned health insurance company, VZP, will not face forced administration for now. The deputy health minister, as well as health minister candidate, met with VZP head Jirina Musilkova on Monday to discuss money-saving steps. The VZP's debt is more than 10 billion crowns (approx. 403,000,000 US dollars) and may grow by 2 more billion crowns by the end of the year unless saving measures are adopted immediately. Mr Rath said that the funds should be saved by a slower increase in payments to hospitals. Saved funds will be sent to smaller private facilities sooner. Mr Rath expects savings in expenses for medicine as well.

Mr Rath and the VZP's Musilkova have planned to meet again next week. Later this week Mr Rath will meet with hospital heads and representatives from both health insurance companies and health care providers.