Final Word from Tuesday, September 10, 2013
If Bohuslav Sobotka of ČSSD becomes the next PM, and Jan Mládek is his finance minister, it will fall to them to lead their party's charge against tax evasion. Sobotka said yesterday that ČSSD no longer wants it to be possible to legalize assets that derive from illegal income. Undeclared assets of high value would be confiscated, but the law would not apply retroactively, as Sobotka and Mládek propose it. And there's the catch. Those two have been in politics forever and have acquired some descriptive nicknames. It's Bohuslav "Suitcase" Sobotka for us, and Miloš Zeman's nickname for Mládek (according to Jan Macháček) is "Big Pockets." Young Jeroným Tejc of ČSSD, who supports Zeman and hasn't held any lucrative executive post in government, wants the asset-declaration law to go back to the 1990s. Sobotka and Mládek are falling into a trap of Zeman's making. By championing the asset-declaration law, he has maneuvered them into supporting something that can conceivably be used to knock them off their perch when the time is right. [Czech Republic prime minister income]
Glossary of difficult words
charge - a headlong rush forward, typically one made by attacking soldiers in battle;
the catch - a hidden problem or disadvantage in an apparently ideal situation;
to champion something - to support the cause of; to defend;
perch - a place where someone or something rests or sits, esp. a place that is high or precarious; a thing on which a bird alights or roosts.