After a crisis-mitigation meeting, Petr Nečas, the Czech Prime Minister,
has resigned, among a scandal-ridden series of events that have finally consumed his ability to function in the post. The proverbial straw that broke the camel's back was the arrest of his Valerie Jarrett, (or maybe his highly questionable version of Karen Hughes), Jana Nagyová. He announced last night that he would resign this morning, and said that he "took full political responsibility" for the scandals (you gotta love that insertion of the word "political in there!).
And what scandals the government has found itself in! The arrest of Ms. Nagyová came after evidence came to light that she had Nečas' soon-to-be-ex-wife, Radka Nečasová, tailed by military intelligence agents. This is of course usually considered an abuse of her post as Chief of Staff, and three high-ranking officials in the intelligence community have also been brought into custody. Altogether, eight people associated with the government have been arrested, and more may be on the way.
The scandals vary, from using ODS party funds to bribe MPs to vote "correctly," to the abuse of power, to the issuing of a variety of less-than-transparent contracts for various government projects.
But obviously, the one the Czech and foreign media have seized on is the sexy one. The weekend edition of Mladá Fronta DNES, the Czech Republic's top-selling (non-tabloid) paper dedicated 10 pages of its 12-page news section to the breaking scandals, featuring such salient headlines as "Nagyová: Intrigues, Spies, Love, and Jealousy," and today simply "The Government has Fallen."
It remains to be seen how close the investigation will get to Nečas himself, though it seems unlikely that he
didn't know about spies tailing his estranged wife. And after all, if you were a President Hillary Clinton, wouldn't you be tailing your husband?
However, Nečas generally is regarded as one of the
less sleazy of the ODS party, and while the sex scandal tops the headlines, it is the clearer cases of corruption that are more relevant. The scandals have exposed a variety of questionable characters Czechs refer to as "Godfathers," many of whom are either already in jail or are conveniently abroad at this time. These scandals have done a great deal of damage to ODS credibility, even at the local level, and augur for a government led by the Social Democrats in the not-too-distant future.
However, early elections would have to be called by the current President, Miloš Zeman, who likely will let the mow extremely fragmented coalition stew for another year. Another possibility is the appointment of a caretaker government until next year's scheduled elections, though at this time ODS has put the current Minister of Trade, Martin Kuba, forward as their PM for the time being. Whether the other coalition partners will continue on this bumpy ride remains to be seen. One unaffiliated MP who previously voted for the government, former Czech hockey star Jiří Šlegr, has already resigned his seat in disgust, saying "I'm going back to the clean world of sports. My leaving will speed up Nečas' exit." He will be replaced by the secretary of a small party led by former Social Democrat PM Jiří Paroubek, who left the Czech Social Democratic Party after his government was booted out some years ago.
So things are in flux. It will be very difficult to guess the next few days, and negotiations among the junior parties as well as with the President are still underway. But one thing is clear: Petr Nečas, like Elvis, has left the building.
