Final Word from Tuesday, October 18, 2022

As early as mid-2014, Roman Jurečko of ODS's Pilsen chapter told LN that the main person in his party was Pavel Blažek, not ODS Chair Petr Fiala. Blažek denied earlier this year in Deník that Fiala is his "product" or that he was the one who came up with the idea of bringing Fiala into ODS. He did want Fiala to become party chairman, though. Blažek is now seen as an intermediary between the cabinet and the Castle, but sometimes Blažek seems closer to the Castle than to Fiala. Blažek, for example, favors straight price regulation of energy, as Miloš Zeman noted in Sept., whereas Fiala supported a model that could end up costing the state budget hundreds of billions of crowns. Fiala and Industry Min. Jozef Síkela are also calling for quick independence from Russian fossil fuels, whereas Blažek - according to activist Ladislav Vrabel - is in talks about bringing in Russian natural gas. Blažek is either a loose cannon, or else he and Fiala are quietly working on an alternative political scenario. [ Czech Republic Lidové noviny president PM STAN ]