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New Czech political movement holds press conference on municipal corruption in North Bohemia

22 October 2012
4 minute read

Yesterday representatives of the political movement “Citizens for the Town, the Town for Citizens” (Občané městu, město občanům – OMMO) held a press conference to present its political program to the press. Hana Svobodová, the first vice-chair of OMMO, spoke about the nature of the program, how it came about, and what its aims are. She emphasized that the movement wants to “profile itself as an entity that embraces civic decorum, common sense, communication and information skills, political correctness, and a balanced ideology and progam that describes the methods through which our aim and purpose will be achieved.” The program is available on the OMMO website, www.hnutiommo.cz.

Vlastimil Balín, the OMMO executive secretary, presented a statement from OMMO member Marian Dancso, who was unable to attend the press conference. The statement described events in the town of Lom, where Dancso is a town councilor. The basic areas of trouble the town is grappling with were outlined and the steps being taken by the local governing coalition of the Severočeši.cz, ODS (Civic Democrats) and Věci veřejné (Public Affairs) parties were descibed as “quite anomalous, to say the least, and have involved rather serious errors.” Given the seriousness of the situation, Dancso submitted a motion on it, reporting that “on 1 August 2011 his proposal to add the following point to the agenda of the town council meeting of the town of Lom was adopted: To task the monitoring committee with auditing all documents produced since the start of the coalition’s term due to the false data and inconsistencies that have come to light in several cases. The audit was to be completed by 30 September 2011. After the chair of the monitoring committee figured out what it was the committee was supposed to audit, he submitted all of his findings to that body, pointing out even more deficiencies which he considered serious and referring to various documents.” However, the situation did not turn out well, because on 30 September 2011 “… the monitoring committee, under the direction of the former Mayor of Lom, Ing. Nétek (KSČM – Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia) did not fulfill its auditing task after all, and not only by not meeting the legal deadline.” Given this fact, Dancso “filed criminal charges of abuse of the powers of a public official against an unidentified perpetrator on 3 October 2011, primarily over the following matters: Financial mismanagement of the assets of the town of Lom; leasing property of the town of Lom at a disadvantageous rate, for example, the lease of a café at the monthly rate of CZK 1 to a woman who had been a candidate for town council on the list of the Severočeši.cz movement; and giving the citizens of Lom deceptive, misleading information regarding the leasing of plots of land to a person who basically does not exist.”

OMMO said they would be following the situation in Lom and reporting further about it: “We don’t intend to merely monitor developments in the situation, but will do our best to resolve the situation through legal means. We do not rule out holding new elections in Lom as one of the solutions.”

Leoš Vaněk, OMMO chair, then presented an evaluation of the circumstances around the approval of the sale of the cultural hall in the town of Most, the sale itself, and subsequent developments: “The building, which according to an expert evaluation has a so-called ‘reproductive value’ of more than half a billion crowns, should have been sold to essentially a single buyer, according to that same expert estimate, for CZK 33 million. Should the de minimis clause have been applied, that would have been, in the end, a mere CZK 28 045 330 including VAT of 20 %, which would obviously have reduced the profit from the sale even further. After subtracting the sticker price of the plots of land involved, the building itself has been sold for only CZK 290 830, which is scandalous.” The OMMO chair also said the “political decisions by the Most Town Council as they took place during the course of last year seem to have involved, at a minimum, a lack of knowledge of some very serious facts, …, and we also question whether the actions were actually taken without that knowledge or whether they were intentional.” He pointed out that “Developments after the town’s coalition leadership was formed as a result of the municipal elections, including the declaration by the Communist Party that it would ‘support the governing coalition in opposition’, may indicate what kind of serious facts were involved in this matter and how important it was, primarily for some business and political entities in Most, that this project be implemented in this way.”

OMMO is considering running candidates in the upcoming regional and Senate elections. The movement is currently organized in both northern and southern Bohemia, northern and southern Moravia, and Olomouc.

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