Will ERU's Alena Vitaskova become the next Ivo Istvan?



Vitaskova overwhelmed by an overwrought environmentalist, a greedy foreign utility and a wicked solar businessman.

A couple of weeks ago, I argued that the reckless verbal assaults on Ivo Istvan by Miroslav Kalousek and others were precisely what the people's president needed to justify his unprecedented political takeover.

Even if the public prosecutor from Olomouc was acting independently of the president in the timing and targeting of his dawn raids earlier this summer, his later visit to the Castle for a bit of moral support reduced Istvan to the status of the president’s dupe.

Should we now expect Zeman to come to the rescue of another exceptionally troublesome public official, the besieged chairwoman of the energy regulator?

Alena Vitaskova does not make it easy for people to like her. She is emotional, somewhat heavy-handed and often ill-informed. But try as we might, it is very hard to falsify the claim that she is acting in the public interest.

Certainly, she has succeeded in uniting her enemies, all of whom think she is part of a conspiracy to destroy only them. In spite of all her obvious failings, it strikes me that her real crime in the eyes of the energy establishment is the fact that she is not under its control.

She has upset the industry she regulates by squeezing its margins and ending the cosy relationship that existed between ERU and the electricity distribution companies under her predecessor, the amiable and accomodating Josef Firt. There can hardly be much wrong in that.

She has angered the fraudsters by working to expose the beneficial owners of all those photovoltaic parks acquired by CEZ -again, this is not unwelcome. Some policemen, presumably under the influence of the fraudsters, are demanding that she herself be charged with abusing her office.

And she has infuriated bona fide investors in the renewable energy sector by pushing for dramatic cuts in subsidies. This is unfair but understandable given the massive abuse of the photovoltaic scheme by bent businessmen and the poodle politicians and public officials they own.

Of course, there is only one fair way to deal with the solar scam and that is to charge, convict and seize the assets of these 'businessmen', and to use them to mitigate the damage being done to bona fide investors. This is one possible though highly unlikely outcome of the investigations underway at ERU today. Little wonder then that Vitaskova has had to be provided with a police escort.

I cannot imagine a public official in greater need of moral support today. But the last thing an independent regulator needs, even one as surrounded by enemies as Vitaskova, is the kind of support that Zeman gave Istvan.

In fact, the more Vitaskova is abused, justly or otherwise, the easier it will be for the president to portray himself as her champion. I bet that before the country goes to the polls in October, Zeman will have invited Vitaskova to the Castle for a cup of tea and a chat.

And then he will no doubt announce to the world, as he did with his protégé in Olomouc, that the chairwoman of ERU is ‘depressed and inexperienced’, a damsel in deep distress and in dire need of protection from that unholy trinity of bent businessmen, fat foreign utilities and environmentalists.

Like Istvan, Vitaskova will then be seen to be have fallen under the president’s wing, and the president will have strengthened his hand with the real (and obviously well-connected -forgive the pun) owners of those photovoltaic parks, the biggest of which were purchased by CEZ-men for fabulous prices and hooked up to the grid seconds before the deadline passed.

The 'lower 10 million', as the president likes to call his people, will thank him for safeguarding the independence of the energy regulator as she struggles to promote the interests of Czech electricity consumers, just as they have thanked him for safeguarding the independence of the public prosecutor as he struggles to convict the traffickers from ODS.

No one will be jailed.

And above all, the people's president will have acquired another alibi to justify his unscrupulous and determined accumulation of power -which is all that matters.