Commentary: How to demolish the pig farm at Lety?

"Lety is a problem the resolution of which can naturally be postponed indefinitely. It is not known how much it will cost for the clean-up operation - and over the years that amount has loosely ranged from between roughly CZK 70 million (EUR 2.59 million) to a virtual billion crowns (EUR 37 million) - but it is certain that basically it will never be possible to properly 'calculate' it or compare it to anything that might placed on the table as a counter-argument that 'it would be better to spend that on XYZ' ", writes Czech journalist Jindřich Šídlo on news server iHNED.cz in response to remarks by Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman about resolving the problem of the industrial pig farm on the site of the former concentration camp for Romani people at Lety by Písek.

"By the way, if just CZK 20 million [EUR 740 000] had been saved out of the state budget each year that this debate has been conducted, which is something close to absolute zero in terms of the budget, them we might have already saved up the money needed by now. So yes, let's play the ridiculous game of those opposed to moving the farm for a moment - the argument that 'there is no money' simply no longer applies as long as the public treasury this year is subsidizing the Brno Grand Prix, a super-commercial event, to the tune of CZK 90 million [EUR 3.3 million]. That's for a weekend of people driving motorcycles in circles," Šídlo writes.

The commentator says that demolishing the farm and building a new one for the AGPI firm to move into can never be presented as a complex problem by anybody with a straight face ever again. "Maybe it was once, but in the year 2016 it just isn't," Šídlo writes.

"Václav Havel was the first (and also the last) President, 21 years ago, to visit Lety. Petr Nečas was the first Prime Minister to visit the site in 2012. Despite all the efforts to do so, Lety has not yet been forgotten. This final step is all that's left to do. Let's get this unending embarrassment off of our backs once and for all," the commentator concludes.