Czech deputy PM should concentrate on ministry work - ODS leader

The senior government Civic Democratic Party (ODS) wishes deputy PM Jiri Cunek (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) to more concentrate on the work at the Local Development Ministry he heads and not to have to deal with new and new scandals, ODS deputy chairman Petr Bendl said today.

Bendl in his capacity as Central Bohemia governor has already once criticised Cunek. He said that Cunek does not have time for his work at the ministry.

Cunek, who is also KDU-CSL chairman and senator, said in a chat on Aktualne.cz server that he devotes about two hours a week to the case in which he has been accused of bribe taking in 2002 when he was mayor of Vsetin, north Moravia.

Bendl said ahead of this evening’s meeting of the government coalition parties on Cunek’s future that nervousness within the ODS is growing.

The meeting has been initiated by the government Green Party that says that Cunek should resign because his statements about Romany citizens repeatedly harm the government’s trustworthiness.

Cunek was catapulted into the centre of the media last year already when he had Romany rent-defaulters moved to container-like flats on the edge of Vsetin, north Moravia, when he was the town’s mayor.

Besides, he had several families moved to shabby houses in other parts of Moravia which, he said, they should reconstruct for themselves while they will be repaying the cost Vsetin had paid for the houses.

The most recently he caused embarrassment with his reply to a reader of the tabloid daily Blesk who asked him whether "other people will also be subsidised like Romanies." Blesk carried the reply on Friday.

"For this you will have to get sunburnt, start making a mess with your family, put up fires in the square and only then will some politicians say – he is really a poor man," Cunek said.

The ODS criticised his statements on Saturday already, and he came under a strong criticism by President Vaclav Klaus yesterday.

Cunek apologised for his statements on Sunday, but said that his words were torn out of context and that people did not understand them.