Final Word from Tuesday, January 14, 2025

PM Petr Fiala wrote in MFD in Nov. in reaction to an article by Andrej Babiš that it isn't Babiš's Communist past, including his likely collaboration with the StB, that worries him, but rather his autocratic, Eastern mindset. This is the real danger, Fiala said. "The fact that you didn't hesitate to buy media or interfere with their freedom, like in Moscow or Budapest. The fact that you discredit your opponents in the Eastern way, create files on them, hand subsidies to your companies, and then have little energy for things of public interest." Catholic priest Marek Orko Vácha, an adviser to Health Min. Vlastimil Válek of TOP 09, told Právo that the Fiala cabinet might not be perfect but that the alternative with an StB agent in the lead is much more depressing. So why, one might ask, is Fiala pushing for quick passage of a change to the penal code that would make it even easier for Babiš, as PM, to create StB-like files on people? Unless Fiala, a proud liberal democrat, plans to create his own files on people. [ Czech Republic criminal Para. 318a unauthorized activity for a foreign power ]