Articles about:
|
Country of Many Problems
Czech succeeded in transfer from command to market-orientated
economy and one-party system to many-party system. She has been
able to construct political and economical stability, which Poland
and Hungary and Slovakia has not been able to achieve. Czech currency
and stock markets are doing fine even though there have been many
governmental crises and Czech economy is doing relatively fine.
This year inflation has been 1.5 %, which has been slowest since
December 2003. Unemployment wasn’t a problem at 1998, as
it was only 3%. Nowadays only Prague can beat that number, as
unemployment rate in Prague-West is only 2.6 %. Rest of the country
has more striking unemployment. Average is 9.4 % and worse place
is town of Most with 22% unemployment but eastern areas also suffer
high unemployment.
Laws of the country are not obeyed well. The use of police during
communist time took away the rest of the respect from police and
law. Stagnation of moral can be seen everywhere and many governmental
crises has not made situation better. Politics lack the support
of public because of scandals. There has not been a social and
cultural change but only economical and political. It goes for
Hungary and Poland too, although Hungary has more hope since the
mentality in the country is much more healthy then in Czech. Hopes
that the Velvet Revolution rose have faded to corruption and political
mistrust. The biggest newspapers don’t even publish Vaclav
Havels speeches, as no one was interested.
This May 9th it has been 60 years since Soviet troops arrived
to Prague. Czechs have divided opinion on weather there should
be any celebration or not. On the one hand Czechs were liberated
from Nazi Germany and that took lives of many Russian solders
but on the other hand Soviets didn’t prove to be any better
masters then Nazis did. So people would probably like to celebrate
those soldiers who gave their life for this country, but they
don’t want to celebrate communists, as they broke many human
rights in the country. Now for the first time victims of communist
occupation has been officially recognised. The government offered
compensation of one million crown, which was reduced to 150 000
crown, to those who suffered occupation, persecutions, etc. This
sum of 5000 euros (3750 dollars) is pathetic. Interesting is that
communist party just introduced a bill that promised to compensate
resistance fighters and their families in World War II the same
amount as political prisoners get nowadays, which is 50 Kc per
month they participated resistance or spent in jail. Pathetic,
or like many says, both of these compensations were too little
and too late.
One of old ways that has survived from communist time is position
of clergy. During communist time the government paid priests salary.
This was seen as a way that communists controlled religion. Those
priests who were accepted by the government had limited opportunity
to work and got salary. Today government still pays salaries of
priests and the Catholic Church sees this as continuity of controlling
the church. There has been some argument of how many priest and
how much should be paid. The same problem goes trough out every
Czech offices. Government officials claim that the Catholic Church
has reported that it has more priests then it really has. The
priests also would like a rise on their salaries. At the moment
they get approximately 13 600 Kc per month, when the average salary
in Czech was 18 035 Kc in year 2004. This whole dispute is a good
example how things work (or don’t work) in Czech. All praise
the Czech bureaucracy.
|
