ODS member Ivo Hlavac replaced Peter Bodnar on the CEZ board of directors this week. Just in time!



What you call ‘trafika’, we call the ‘revolving door’, or cronyism.

Cronyism is the main staple of politicians the world over. It is one of the more obvious symptoms of the decline of the Western parliamentary system, a system in which career politicians have come to dominate.

These professionals, though sometimes out of power in a formal sense, are rarely if ever out of work. Theirs is typically a job for life. The competition between them is largely meaningless. In the end, they serve each others interests, regardless of the party to which they belong.

Career politicians have little time for bona fide permanent civil servants and competent managers of state companies, whose political independence is an essential part of their contribution to good government and good management. Indeed, the modern politician has become both civil servant and manager, with the only difference being that he is expected to maintain the pretence of partiality.

The practice of cronyism or ‘trafika’ as it called locally, is especially acute in the Czech republic because of the absence of a civil service law, 24 years after the fall of communism, and of any meaningful corporate governance of state-run companies.

There are so many examples of this rampant cronyism in Czech public life that it seems unfair to pick on a single individual. Nevertheless….

Ivo Hlavac, an ODS member, this week was appointed a board director of CEZ after less than a year as the company’s head internal lobbyist. He replaces Peter Bodnar on the board of directors. Given that Bodnar is a nuclear energy expert and Hlavac a ‘Yes man’, what does this tell us about the priorities of CEO Daniel Benes?


ODS ministry men Chalupa and Hlavac helping themselves...

Before joining CEZ (in fact, he was rejoining CEZ after a break from the state-owned firm of some six years), Hlavac had the privilege to serve his country as a deputy agriculture minister, a deputy minister of regional development and a deputy environment minister. In early 2012, Hlavac tore himself off the public nipple, and found employment in the private sector, albeit in a part of the private sector that lives off public contracts –he joined the consultancy arm of the Prague office of Deloitte, presumably to massage the firm’s public sector clients, such as the interior ministry - and CEZ. Hlavac’s time in the market place was short lived however, and before the year was out, our hero was back on the nipple again, at CEZ. And today he is a member of its board.

Just in time, Mr Hlavac! Andrej Babis has promised to halt the revolving door between political parties and state companies. In future, the boards of companies like CEZ will be filled by independent experts with hands-on experience of running companies –like Agrofert.