Final Word from Monday, April 7, 2014
Ellen DeGeneres opened the Oscars last month by saying that things were so different when she first hosted them seven years earlier. Back then, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese were all nominated. It's so different this year, she joked, as she pointed to the same nominees again. And so it is with the OKD "awards." It's the same cast of characters as a decade ago: Zdeněk Bakala, Bohuslav Sobotka, Radek Pokorný, Jan Mládek, Pavel Telička. Mládek, now the industry minister, pulled a rabbit out of his hat last week when he revealed that Telička was on the commission for proposing a solution to the Paskov problem. Hardly anyone knew this until Mládek spoke, and by doing so he turned Sobotka's OKD problem into Andrej Babiš's OKD problem too. Babiš has been publicly tearing to shreds the very proposal that was supported by his EU election leader, Telička, in his capacity as NWR's envoy to deal with Mládek's ministry. Právo noticed today that Babiš has already started backpedaling on the Paskov issue. [Czech Republic European Union coal ANO ČSSD]
Glossary of difficult words
to pull a rabbit out of a/the hat - used to describe an action that comes at a lucky time and may involve sleight of hand or deception;
to tear something to shreds - to criticize something harshly; to rip something or someone into pieces;
envoy - a messenger or representative;
to backpedal - to reverse one's previous action or opinion.