Final Word from Monday, September 26, 2011
When PM Petr Nečas spoke about the mercenaries who are running ČEZ, he forgotto mention the hired guns ČEZ has in Parliament. As Transparency Int. pointed out,MPs Milan Urban of ČSSD and Petr Bendl of ODS are sponsors of an amendment tothe public-procurement bill that would exclude regulated utilities such as ČEZ, EPH,RWE Transgas and Veolia from the law. This is just the kind of evisceration of theprocurement bill that many people had been expecting. To his credit, DevelopmentMin. Kamil Jankovský opposes the idea from Urban's economics committee. If thebad publicity helps kill the bill, ČEZ will presumably revert to Plan B and simply ignorethe public-procurement law where possible. There's a precedent: The SupremeAdministrative Court ruled in 2009 that ČEZ is a "public" institution and thereforesubject to the freedom-of-information act, but ČEZ refused to respect the ruling.
Glossary of difficult words
mercenary - a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army; a person primarily concerned with material reward at the expense of ethics;
hired gun - an expert brought in to resolve complex problems or to lobby for a cause; a hired mercenary, bodyguard or assassin;
evisceration - the act of removing the essential content from something; the act of cutting open and removing the internal organs of an animal.