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An international incident occurred
this month when a Polish posse seized a fugitive from a
hotel in Ceský Tešín and hustled him
across the border without any extradition proceedings. They
were led by Krzysztof Rutkowski, a private detective turned
member of the Polish parliament. Their quarry was a young
man accused of committing a brutal murder in, of all places,
Auschwitz. The Czech police later argued that Rutkowski,
who represents the Self-defense Party, had duped them into
going along with the operation by using his diplomatic credentials.
They plan to file charges against him, though he has little
to fear from a Czech posse coming after him any time soon.
The police would suffer more embarrassment when their second
highest-ranking cop, Miroslav Antl, was forced to resign
after causing an accident and failing the subsequent breathalyzer
test. Antl, a former prosecutor famous for his book "I
Don't Like Crooks", was on his way from a meeting with
the top cop himself, but insists the alcohol came from the
hard liquor he was swilling from a bottle at eight o'clock
that morning. The police did, however, get a break in another
alcohol-related matter. The former police chief of Hradec
Kralové had been sentenced to 400 hours of community
service for his attempts to obstruct the drunk driving cases
brought against a state's attorney and some other official
honcho. On appeal, the court decided that the sentence was
too undignified for a former high-ranking cop and slapped
him with only a paltry fine. He was just helping his friends,
that's all. Another cozy relationship between the police
and local authorities came to light in Brno, where government
dwellings meant for minority Roma families were given to
local police officers instead. The chief of police there
went on record saying he doesn't see any reason why the
Roma should get any special treatment. In Usti nad Labem,
the city that wanted to wall off part of its Roma population
a few years ago, a coalition calling itself the Democratic
Block has proposed building special units for "non-conformist"
residents (i.e. Roma) where the police can keep a good eye
on them. On the other hand, the vice-mayor of the city thought
he would make up for his sneering that the Roma were "locusts"
by posing with a Gypsy girl on a campaign poster. But his
stud-like pose suggests he's still the same old hayseed.
And finally on a national level, Labor Minister Zdenek Škromach
is planning to make life more difficult for those Roma who
return home after failing to obtain asylum elsewhere in
Europe. He thinks he can discourage them from continuing
to embarrass the Czech Republic abroad by cutting their
welfare benefits. Maybe it once occurred to him that the
offer of a decent job might prove more effective, but welfare
reform remains a hot topic in the run-up to elections next
month. In the first round of voting for Senate seats, the
conservative Civic Democrats made something of a comeback
after their humiliating loss over the summer. But there
was only one candidate who reached the magical 50% mark,
thereby avoiding a runoff, and that was the ever-slippery
Vladimír Zelezný, the station manager of TV
Nova. He campaigned as an independent, but his ties to the
Civic Democrats are well-known and they didn't even bother
to field a candidate against him. In return for the favor,
his station, and only his station, aired charges of corruption
against former Prague mayor Jan Kasl, who had earned the
everlasting enmity of the Civic Democrats after ditching
them right before the last election. Why Zelezný
wants to be a senator in the first place, when he has no
plans to leave TV, was also clear from the start. As a senator,
he will be entitled to immunity from all the criminal charges
still pending against him. As for how he managed to win
so easily in heavily-Communist Znojmo, he simply took a
leaf from Hillary Clinton's playbook and won on the strength
of his celebrity. Now all that's needed is for his good
friend Václav Klaus to win the presidency and the
store is theirs. Klaus has decided to make the run now that
his lieutenants are lining up behind former Ostrava mayor
Evžen Tošenovský and his bid to assume
the leadership of the Civic Democrats. Since Klaus hasn't
got enough support in parliament, where the president is
elected, he has reversed his earlier contempt for direct
elections and is now openly supporting them. Zelezný
proved with his victory that, rogue or no rogue, celebrity
goes a long way in a field of nobodies. But this tactic
requires that a constitutional amendment be passed, and
in a manner of months no less. Direct elections could also
enable Havel to run for yet another term as president, although
his shenanigans during the flooding crisis, in addition
to his poor health, have caused his popularity among the
Czech people to plummet to its lowest level ever. With this
most likely to be his last year in office, he chose the
holiday marking the country's statehood to bestow national
honors on several of is good friends, especially those who
continue to sing praises of him. It would appear that Zelezný
isn't the only one with the Clinton playbook in hand.
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