Press Review
Continued controversy over who should be the Czech Republic's EU commissioner, efforts by the Christian Democratic Party to push through much tougher punishment for violent crimes and the 35th anniversary of the self-immolation of Jan Palach in protest of the Soviet led invasion of Czechoslovakia - those are the main stories on most of today's front pages.
Mlada Fronta Dnes notes that the leader of the Christian Democrats Miroslav Kalousek is making good on his promise to see his party's programme more vigorously implemented. He is putting up a big fight over the candidate for EU commissioner, telling Pravo that the Christian Democrats will not be ridiculed by the Social Democrats' choice and firmly telling the strongest party in government that his party's policy of getting tough with offenders is exactly what Czech society needs.
The Christian Democrats want a law which would send serious offenders to 25 years in jail, up from the present 10, and are pushing for the "three strikes and in" principle which would send repeat offenders to jail for life. According to Mlada Fronta Dnes there's been a mixed response to this proposal with some judges and state attorneys strongly opposed to it.
Martin Komarek says in Mlada Fronta Dnes that Kalousek's recent election to the post of party leader will definitely break the peace within the governing coalition. What we can now expect is something like an Italian marriage, Komarek says, because Kalousek was elected to do what his predecessor Cyril Svoboda clearly couldn't - get tough with the Prime Minister.
From now on the Prime Minister will not know a moment's peace -the commentator predicts - Kalousek will make life as difficult for him as the one time party head Josef Lux made life hard for the then prime minister Vaclav Klaus. Can Prime Minister Spidla handle that kind of pressure? Komarek asks.
Away from politics, Lidove Noviny reports that the price of flats in the unsightly high-rise estates built in the communist years is likely to drop after the country joins the European Union in May. The price of apartments in Prague's historic buildings will on the other hand increase as will the price of newly built flats.
An estimated one third of the population lives in the communist-built estates which the former president Vaclav Havel often described as rabbit hutches.
Mlada Fronta Dnes reports that schools across the country are fighting over pupils. Too few children and too many schools, is how the paper describes the present situation. Schools which are on the brink of closing down due to a lack of pupils begin to court parents a year or two before their child is old enough to be sent to school.
They offer better learning techniques, more optional subjects and even a financial reward of up to 10 thousand crowns if the child is enrolled at their school. Even so, the paper says, given the present demographic trends it is inevitable that some schools will lose their fight for survival and many children will have to get used to the idea of taking a school bus to a nearby town.
And finally, Hospodarske Noviny reports that the governing coalition wants to change the manner in which people pay their TV license fees. It is pushing for a law under which all citizens would automatically pay TV license fees - with the exception of those who want to go to the trouble to prove that they do not own a television set and produce a legally stamped document to that effect.
