Press Review
The return home of two Czech prisoners serving 50 year jail sentences for heroin smuggling in Thailand is splashed across today's front pages. "Handcuffed, behind bars, but home" reads the lead headline in Mlada Fronta Dnes.
Their return home was to have been veiled in secrecy, but that proved an impossible feat, says the paper. When they landed on a planned stop over in Paris Czech journalists and television crews were waiting for whatever details they could get. Not even the fact that the prisoners were under heavy security and kept in strict isolation prevented the event from turning into a media circus. Some journalists even offered to cover the flight expenditures in return for an exclusive story, says Mlada Fronta Dnes.
Pravo notes that the two prisoners, who served eight and nine years respectively in very severe conditions in Bangkok, were feted like war heroes upon their return. Public sympathy for them is overwhelming, the paper says, but people should keep in mind that they are being justly punished for a serious offence and the agreement with Thailand stipulates that they will serve at least two thirds of their sentence in the Czech Republic. What is right, Pravo says, is that the state has looked after them in bringing them home to more humane prison conditions and their families.
But as there is controversy among the public there is controversy among commentators on this point. Martin Komarek of Mlada Fronta Dnes argues: if a Czech citizen got caught picking pockets in a country where this offence is punished by cutting off the culprit's hands and the state managed to extradite him with one hand still intact - would we really cut it off -he asks.
Another big topic which is likely to draw readers' attention is the rent-deregulation story on the front page of today's Lidove Noviny. The paper reports that the ruling Social Democrats have given in to pressure from their coalition partners and agreed to speed up rent deregulation.
According to the paper finance minister Bohuslav Sobotka has agreed to withdraw a proposed draft law on deregulation and re-write is so as to come closer to the demands of the Christian Democrats and Freedom Union. The Social Democrats who had been keeping a tight reign on rent-deregulation have promised that whatever compromise is reached it will be socially tenable. People who pay rent will undoubtedly be keeping a very sharp eye on developments in that sphere.
The same paper notes that today Parliament will meet to discuss amendments in the labour code, a bill recently rejected by the Senate, which includes articles relating to sexual harassment in the workplace. Senators recently downplayed the latter and made a lot of witty comments about sexual harassment before sweeping the bill off the table, the paper says.
As for MPs in the Lower House they gave the nation a public performance of sexual harassment, practicing on Parliament deputy Petra Buzkova. If the practice is widespread even among the elite of the nation - which you'd expect to be well behaved - then that is one law we clearly need, says Lidove Noviny. Hopefully, the outraged response of the public to their boorish jokes at Ms. Buzkova's expense will have made them realize that, the paper concludes.
