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Carolina (English) No 166
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STUDENT'S E-MAIL NEWS FROM CZECH REPUBLIC
Faculty of Social Science of Charles University
Smetanovo nabr. 6
110 01 Prague 1
Czech Republic
e-mail: CAROLINA@cuni.cz
tel: (+42 2) 24810804, ext. 252, fax: (+42 2) 24810987
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C A R O L I N A No 166, Friday, June 30, 1995.
EVENTS FOR THE WEEK JUNE 22-28, 1995
Railroad Accident Claims 18 Lives in Eastern Bohemia
Sixteen youths and two railway workers lost their lives in an
accident Saturday night near the town of Koruna na Chrudimsku in eastern
Bohemia. Four individuals were injured seriously and one slightly.
The accident occurred when four cars came loose from a freight
train while being moved at the station in Cechov and collided head-on
with a single-car passenger train traveling down the tracks.
At the moment of impact, the passenger train was moving at a speed
of 30 km per hour (roughly 20 mph) and the freight cars, coasting
downhill, at 100 km per hour (roughly 60 mph).
Czech Police are working with the Czech Railways to determine how
the freight cars came loose from the train, and on Sunday three railway
employees were charged in connection with the accident, the worst in
this country in 25 years.
According to Josef Bazala, director of Czech Railways, the primary
cause of the mishap was human failure, as the preliminary investigation
has shown that one of the three railway employees being charged in the
case was drinking alcohol on duty. Muhammad Shah/Alex Zucker
Meciar Declines Official Talks With Czechs
While Czech Premier Vaclav Klaus met with his Slovak counterpart
Vladimir Meciar towards the end of the European Union summit in Cannes,
they did not engage in any official negotiations.
Following their meeting, Klaus said he was disappointed because the
Slovak premier was only willing to hold talks on the level of
ambassadors and ministry officials. Meciar said he was unable to take up
official business because he "did not receive any invitation."
Following Meciar's statement, the Czechs made an attempt to set up
bilateral talks, but were turned down, according to Slovak Foreign
Minister Juraj Senka mainly due to a lack of time and a full schedule.
Klaus met officially with Polish Premier Jozef Oleksy on Tuesday.
Jindrich Jirasek/Andrea Snyder
ODS and KDS Sign Merger Agreement
Vaclav Klaus and Ivan Pilip, the chairmen of the Civic Democratic
Party (ODS) and the Christian Democratic Party (KDS), signed a "wedding"
agreement last week, viewed as the first step toward the consolidation
of conservative political parties in the Czech Republic.
Both leaders expressed satisfaction with the agreement. KDS Chair
Ivan Pilip said he decided in favor of the fusion because the vast
majority of KDS's positions on the issues are identical to those of ODS.
The agreement is scheduled to be initialed at the two parties' next
congresses in the fall.
ODS maintains steady support from about 27 percent of Czech voters,
whereas KDS is wobbling near the 0.5 percent mark. The Christian
Democrats only got into Parliament and the government coalition thanks
to a coalition with ODS in the 1992 elections.
Tomas Kopecny/Jirka Schneider
Sergei Kovalyov Awarded Homo Homini Prize for Stance in Chechen Crisis
Human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov, a member of Russian
Parliament and special envoy of President Boris Yeltsin, received the
Homo homini prize last Thursday in Prague from the foundation Clovek
v tisni (Man in Distress) for his opposition to Russian policies in
Chechenya and his firm stance during the dramatic events recently in the
south Russian town of Buddyonovsk. Muhammad Shah/Jirka Schneider
Dlouhy No Longer Tops Popularity Charts
President Vaclav Havel dethroned Minister of Industry and Trade
Vladimir Dlouhy from the position of most popular Czech politician this
month. Havel is currently favored by 76 percent of the population, up by
2 percent over May. Dlouhy's popularity has dropped 6 percentage points
to the current 72 percent, which may be related to decreasing voter
confidence in his party, the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA).
Trailing Havel and Dlouhy were Jiri Dienstbier, chairman of the
Free Democrats (61 percent), and Foreign Minister Josef Zieleniec (55
percent) and Transport Minister Jan Strasky (50 percent), both of the
Civic Democratic Party (ODS). Neither Prime Minister and ODS Chairman
Vaclav Klaus nor the Social Democrats' leader Milos Zeman made it past
the 50 percent mark. Tomas Kopecny/Andrea Snyder
Apartment Affair Helped Klaus
This was the headline introducing an article in last Thursday's
"Lidove noviny" about how the affair resulting from Prime Minister
Vaclav Klaus' receiving an apartment from the city government (see
Carolina no. 163) turned around in a peculiar way.
"I've got a whole stack of proposals, offers of apartments and
villas to rent or to buy, to move into tomorrow, the day after tomorrow
or whenever, from all over the country," Klaus told "Lidove noviny."
These offers, according to Klaus, came from people who felt the
media came down on him unfairly, when a wave of public criticism at the
beginning of June forced him to give up a luxurious public apartment
granted to him by the Prague 6 district council.
Lida Truneckova/Jirka Schneider
Brno Stages Biggest Wedding Ever
The Boby Center in Brno played host on Sunday to an unusual event
titled "The Wedding of the Year," with 29 couples and some 400 wedding
guests from throughout the Czech Republic.
Antonin Emerle, 57, and Eva Mecnerova, 53, of Prague, were the
oldest newlyweds, while the youngest lovers to take their vows were
Radim Bilek, 20, and Monika Ottingerova, 18, of Uherske Hradiste.
The celebration, paid for in full by the 1+1 Agency, included
a wedding night in the Boby Center Hotel. Tomas Kopecny/Alex Zucker
BUSINESS/ECONOMICS
Government Decides to Sell Off More than One-Fourth of Telecom
The Czech government decided last week to sell a 27 percent share
in SPT Telecom, the Czech telecommunications monopoly, for 1.32 billion
dollars to TelSource, a Dutch-Swiss consortium.
"The government's decision was completely unanimous," Premier
Vaclav Klaus said after Wednesday's Cabinet session. The Czech press
described it as the largest foreign investment yet in this country.
Also bidding for shares in Telecom were STET of Italy, TeleDenmark,
and the Czech consortia Tel Far and CeTel.
With the cash injection TelSource is providing, Telecom has plans
to increase the number of phone lines in the Czech Republic from 22 per
100 inhabitants to 36. Lida Truneckova/Alex Zucker
Exchange Rates of the Czech National bank (valid from June 30)
Checks Cash
country buy sell middle buy sell
Great Britain 1 GPB 41,085 41,497 41,291 39,87 42,71
France 1 FRF 5,306 5,360 5,333 5,13 5,53
Italy 1000 ITL 15,853 16,013 15,933 15,16 16,70
Japan 100 JPY 30,478 30,784 30,631 29,33 31,93
Canada 1 CAD 18,879 19,069 18,974 18,08 19,86
Austria 1 ATS 2,644 2,670 2,657 2,60 2,72
Germany 1 DEM 18,596 18,782 18,689 18,23 19,15
Switzerland 1 CHF 22,368 22,592 22,480 21,98 22,98
USA 1 USD 25,991 26,253 26,122 25,42 26,82
Slovakia 1 XCU -- -- 34,460 -- --
CULTURE
Czech Philharmonic Affair Goes On
Ladislav Kantor, general director of the Czech Philharmonic
Orchestra, has been removed from his post. Minister of Culture Pavel
Tigrid, who made the move despite disapproval from the Philharmonic's
board of directors, said that Kantor was damaging both the country's and
the orchestra's reputation by his failure to settle the matter of
a controversial concert by the Philharmonic in Bonn.
According to Kantor, this concert, held at the invitation of Jiri
Grusa, the Czech ambassador to Germany, was set up by chief conductor
Gerd Albrecht without the knowledge of the Philharmonic's leadership.
The entire matter is made even spicier by the fact that the
Philharmonic's board of directors discovered that Albrecht accepted - in
violation of his contract, according to the board - royalties of
140,000 DM for performances with the orchestra in the last year.
While Tigrid has said he will consider dismissing Albrecht if he
does not return the money, Albrecht himself says he does not intend to
give back a thing, and that he will settle the dispute in court.
Tomas Kopecny/Jirka Schneider
SPORTS
Czech Soccer on the Level?
In spite of this year's high attendance levels, Czech soccer is in
a crisis. First Jan Stejskal quit the national team (see Carolina no.
164), and last week Benesov club owner Miroslav Svarc disturbed the calm
of summer vacation by telling the press that first-league referees
regularly take bribes of 100,000 crowns and up from owners just to
officiate fairly.
Svarc said he did not know any team that did not pay bribes or any
referee that was "clean." While he himself did not name names, others
have since come forward with specific charges.
While the president of the Bohemian-Moravian Football Association,
Frantisek Chvalovsky, said he knew nothing about such practices, the
association's executive committee dissolved its referee commission in
response to complaints that it was the most ineffective of the
association's bodies and named Zdenek Vales to head up a new commission.
Vales was rated the worst referee in the first league last year.
Tuesday on the television show "Arena," Chvalovsky stood by his
statement in a heated debate with Lubos Pucek, rated the league's best
referee last year by the referee commission. "The executive committee
was elected by the general assembly and can do whatever it wants,"
Chvalovsky said.
A telephone survey conducted simultaneously with the program showed
that just 10 percent of the viewers believed Chvalovsky's claims that
this year's league results were legitimate. Mirek Langer/Alex Zucker
Sports in Brief
* The European Football Association dropped the coefficients previously
used to set the number of teams allowed in cup tournaments, thereby
renewing the Czech Republic's hopes of entering the Masters' League.
* Robert Holik of the New Jersey Devils became the sixth Czech in
history to play for a Stanley Cup winner in the NHL.
* In the "soccer match of the year" a team made up of Czech players who
either play or have played for foreign clubs defeated the Czech
first-league all-stars 3-1.
* Daniela Bartova cleared the bar at 4.14 meters in Wesel, again raising
the world record in women's pole vault.
* In soccer, Boby Brno lost at home, 2-1, to Groningen in the Intertoto
Cup, from which it is possible to advance to the UEFA Cup.
* The men of Dukla Praha and the women of Zlin became this year's
champions in Czech team handball.
* Regulus, trained by Frantisek Vitek and ridden by Libor Sindar, was
the winner in this year's Czech Derby, held for the first time in
Karlovy Vary. Mirek Langer/Alex Zucker
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Dear readers,
this summer Carolina will appear every other week as follows:
July 14 Jan Jirak no. 167
July 28 Lida Truneckova no. 168
Aug. 11 Lida Truneckova no. 169
Aug. 25 Jan Jirak no. 170.
Andrea Snyder will be translating and Alex Zucker will be editing.
We will keep you up to date on our September schedule, and we will
return to weekly publication at the end of September.
Enjoy your vacation, enjoy your summer!
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