Final Word from Tuesday, December 21, 2021
It's mostly been forgotten or ignored that the main reason Pres. Miloš Zeman refused in mid-2019 to appoint Michal Šmarda as culture minister was that he was a buddy of Bohuslav Sobotka's. Šmarda was to be the representative in the cabinet of the commercial group we call ČSSD a.s. While Sobotka and ČSSD a.s. were in control of ČSSD, the party put money and deals first and consequently slid from 22.08% in the 2010 parliamentary elections to 7.27% in 2017. Sobotka had the full support of Czech TV, where ČSSD a.s. is entrenched. But after Sobotka's successor, Jan Hamáček, pushed Tomáš Petříček out as foreign minister, the new goal of ČSSD a.s. became to use its friends in the media to drive ČSSD out of Parliament. This was successful. After Hamáček was dispensed with, the same media that had worked against him and ČSSD were assigned the task of building up the new ČSSD chairman, Michal Šmarda. That's why you'll be seeing so much of his smiling face. [ Czech Republic Television president OVM Czech Radio ]
Glossary of difficult words
buddy - a close friend;
to slide - to change gradually to a worse condition or lower level;
entrenched - established (in attitude, habit or belief) so firmly that change is very difficult or unlikely;
to dispense with - to manage without or to get rid of.