Are Miroslav Šlouf and his mates really the best way to ensure that crimes are investigated without political pressure?

President Zeman justified his ‘government of experts’ with the argument that this was the best way to ensure that suspected crimes now being investigated by the state prosecutor are free of political interference.

His 'experts' are politically neutral he claimed - even though they are closely tied to a political party that bears the president's name, Strana práv občanů ZEMANOVCI (SPOZ).

The interior minister-in-waiting, Martin Pecina, reinforced the point, insisting that the president wants to ensure that Ivo Ištvan’s investigation is allowed to be objective.

Pecina is closely linked to SPOZ. So are the nominated prime minister, Jiří Rusnok; the likely foreign minister, Jan Kohout; and the likely justice minister, Marie Benešová. Is the president drunk with power or just drunk? People are mightily pissed off to be sure, but does Zeman really think he can sell them a handful of Zemanites as a government of politically neutral experts?

Does he really believe that such an acutely partisan government built around a political party that failed to secure a single seat in the lower house of parliament at the last elections can now secure a parliamentary majority, against the will of all incumbent parliamentary parties?

And can such a president and such a government be relied upon to protect the independence of the judicial system?

Parliament must dissolve itself at the earliest opportunity, thereby forcing early elections to allow voters to decide whether they wish to be ruled by Zeman & Zeman. As the German president pointed out to his Czech counterpart this morning in Berlin, the president is not a second government.

Early elections would mean that Kalousek and others of interest to the state prosecutor lose their parliamentary immunity much sooner than even they had feared.

But Kalousek losing his immmunity is no bad thing, especially if early dissolution helps to circumvent the president from imposing upon the country, even for three months, a single party government beholden to the likes of Miroslav Šlouf.