The head of state says his experts will provide the state prosecutor with protection from political pressure.

I would like to return to a justification given by the head of state for his so-called ‘government of experts’.

The president said that such a government, being politically neutral, is the best guarantee that the investigation by the Olomouc state prosecutor is allowed to be objective, that is to say, free from political pressure.

It would be unwise to underestimate the significance of this particular justification for this particular solution to the crisis of legitimacy facing the country today, given that yesterday’s nomination of a caretaker prime minister by the president was caused by that very same investigation.

Petr Nečas and Miroslav Kalousek, as well as others in their government-in-resignation, are themselves under investigation –a fact that must not be overlooked.

Kalousek may be a good parliamentarian battling a power-crazed president and an overzealous prosecutor. But his parliamentarianism might also be connected to the fact that he enjoys immunity from prosecution for as long as he has a seat in the building.

In my opinion, the need to safeguard the integrity of the state prosecutor was by far the most significant (I did NOT say 'convincing') reason of those offered by the president yesterday in support of his decision to ask Jiří Rusnok to form a government -a decision that has met with unanimous and vigorous opposition from parliament.

The most unanimous and most vigorous opponent of them all is Kalousek himself of course. (‘But how can one man amount to unanimity’, I hear you ask? He cannot, but you try telling Kalousek that!)

The president’s justification implies that there is a danger that the investigation will be manipulated by politicians. We can only assume that the president had Kalousek in mind, given the finance minister's history of haranguing the police and other agents of law enforcement interested in his political allies and their business partners.


Vlasta on his mind: Kalousek and Zeman at the Velehrad pilgrimage in July 2012, the very day that Kalousek is meant to have harangued police president Petr Lessy on the telephone about Vlasta Parkanova. "The telephone call took place en route to Velehrad. I was not alone in the car, I have witnesses."


The president's justification in itself is shocking, not only because it might be true but because it shows that he appears to think, and wants us to believe, that the independence of the investigations by the police and public prosecutor is threatened.

Which begs us all to ask the question: Is it?

Now, you will say that I am being too literal, and that the head of state is a certain Miloš Zeman; that Miloš Zeman is a politician; and that this justification was ‘political’, part of his own power game to discredit his political rivals.

I would agree with you. And that, dear Reader, is the nature of the problem that faces us: utterly unscrupulous politicians, exemplified by Zeman and Kalousek, that play with our belief in the legitimacy of our institutions, by far the most important of which is the institution of the rule of law.

So I ask the question again: What comes first, a clean prosecutor or a clean politician? It is, of course, futile to try to identify the first case of a circular cause and consequence. In truth, we need both, at the same time and for a prolonged gestation, before a mature and stable parliamentary democracy is born.

If Miloš Zeman and his principal antagonist today, Miroslav Kalousek, are to be believed, we have neither. And if they are not to be believed, then perhaps we have a clean prosecutor. This would be good, for it raises the possibility that we might also have a clean president again -one day.