Final Word from Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Many reasons exist for forming a commission or council in politics, but achieving the stated goals is rarely one of them. The most common reason for doing so is to create a way to kick the can down the road: Responsibility and accountability are distributed among many people, and nothing much gets done. Another frequent reason is to ramrod through a desired outcome, as was the case with the Pačes energy commission on nuclear power and coal-mining limits. A commission that actually wants to resolve a problem from scratch has little chance of coming to an effective conclusion, and such will likely be the fate of the new National Economic Council for addressing the economic crisis. By creating the council, PM Mirek Topolánek clearly wants to be seen to be proactive, but why he would want to head it himself is a mystery. Better to give the thankless job to a rival he wants to cut down to size.[Czech Republic Václav Temelín]
Glossary of difficult words
to kick the can down the road - to delay resolving an issue;
accountability - answerability; the state of being required to justify one's actions or decisions;
to ramrod something through - to force a proposed measure to be accepted quickly;
from scratch - from the very beginning; without using or relying on any previous work for assistance;
proactive - creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen instead of responding to it after it has happened;
thankless - difficult or unpleasant and not likely to be appreciated by others;
to cut someone down to size - to deflate someone's exaggerated sense of self-worth.