Final Word from Thursday, January 9, 2025

As ODS chairman and aspiring prime minister in Sept. of 2019, Petr Fiala told HN that open criticism by politicians of law-enforcement decisions is the final stage of the decline of a democratic, rule-of-law state and that he had therefore never done that before and never would. Nevertheless, he said, the decision of State Prosecutor Jaroslav Šaroch to drop the Stork's Nest case raised questions. "Moreover," Fiala said, "it is evident that the sudden change of the justice minister in the spring [Marie Benešová took over from Jan Kněžínek in April 2019] will not contribute to the wide belief that everything in this case was done correctly." Fiala was in effect suggesting that Andrej Babiš's government had rigged the Stork's Nest case to Babiš's benefit while Senior Prague State Prosecutor Lenka Bradáčová was overseeing the case. It will now be Babiš's turn, as ANO chairman and aspiring prime minister, to make similar claims about the Fiala government if the corruption problems in Brno that are now plaguing the current justice minister, Pavel Blažek of ODS, suddenly go away after Bradáčová takes over as the supreme state prosecutor on April 1. [ Czech Republic PM ČSSD SocDem chief ]