Leader of the Social Democrats criticizes Czech Bishops’ conference

The current head of the Czech Bishops’ conference Jan Graubner has distanced himself from a statement published on the conference’s website on Tuesday. Jan Graubner, who is to be replaced by Prague archbishop Dominik Duka on May 1, said the statement reflected the opinion of the bishop who wrote it rather than the opinion of the bishops’ conference as a whole. The document published on the conference’s website states that Czech voters are likely to focus on the policy programs of some of the smaller parties. It earned harsh criticism from the two main players on the Czech political scene, the Social Democrats and the Civic Democrats. On Wednesday, leader of the Social Democrats Jiří Paroubek said in a letter to the future head of the Bishops’ conference Dominik Duka that the conference was influencing the outcome of the general elections to be held in May and was indirectly calling on voters to give preference to smaller parties.