I was talking to a Czech friend about it. For those of you who haven't heard, Čunek resigned as Deputy Prime Minister on Thursday afternoon. PM Topolánek said he should either be able to categorically deny the allegations against him - that his family claimed social security benefits despite having millions of crowns in the bank - or resign. This is the second scandal that Čunek has been involved in this year and he seemed to be untouchable, hence the headline in yesterday's Lidové noviny - "Pád ,,teflonového'' lidovce". The importance of his resignation to my Czech friend was that even as recently as five years ago, the response to the allegations would have been "So what?" and he finds it very encouraging that the standards of behaviour being demanded of Czech politicians are rising.
They are rising, but not enough. Cunek resigned only, because he was forced to do it by his party fellows. And his party (christian democrats) could do whatever they wanted in past, because despite they are small party, they are important for other parties as tilt on the scales because they collaborated with anyone who won elections. But lately their electoral prognosis falled near to limit for access to parliament, so now they are frightened.
In my experience, and I worked in politics in the UK before I came to Prague, not many politicians will resign of their own volition unless something or someone forces them to. I presume Čunek's colleagues forced his hand, not necessarily because they personally disapproved of his actions - apparently, he said that they were all guilty of similar misdeneanours - but because they realised that such behaviour is becoming less acceptable to the electorate and would damage the Party's reputation. In the UK, what usually happens is that some scandal will be revealed by the media and then everyone waits to see how long the story runs for in the papers. If it goes on for a week and doesn't look as though it's going to go away, there might be a resignation but if not, unless the politician is very unpopular with his or her colleagues, they will probably stay in post. I agree with my Czech friend that what happened to Čunek might actually be preferable!
