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Jirà Paroubek
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Jirí Paroubek (pronounced ) (born 21 August, 1952 in Olomouc) is a Czech politician, chairman of the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD). From April 25, 2005 to August 16, 2006, he was prime minister of the Czech Republic.
Early career
Paroubek entered politics in 1970 at the age of 18, right after beginning his studies at the University of Economics, Prague. That year he joined the Czechoslovak Socialistic Party, a member party of the Czechoslovak National Front. He reached the lower levels of the party leadership before leaving the party in 1986.
As such he attracted the attention of the state secret police (StB) and was contacted by them three times.
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Encyclopedia
Jirí Paroubek (pronounced ) (born 21 August, 1952 in Olomouc) is a Czech politician, chairman of the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD). From April 25, 2005 to August 16, 2006, he was prime minister of the Czech Republic.
Early career
Paroubek entered politics in 1970 at the age of 18, right after beginning his studies at the University of Economics, Prague. That year he joined the Czechoslovak Socialistic Party, a member party of the Czechoslovak National Front. He reached the lower levels of the party leadership before leaving the party in 1986.
As such he attracted the attention of the state secret police (StB) and was contacted by them three times. He was assigned the cover name Roko (after Paroubek's pet parakeet), but he never worked for the secret police and after 1982 was left alone, since he "did not have enough potential and contacts".
He served his military service (one year) as an army food services supervisor in the southern Bohemian city of Prachatice. After graduating in 1976, Paroubek worked as a manager for several state companies including the restaurants holding (Restaurace a jídelny).
Following the Velvet Revolution in November 1989 Paroubek joined the newly reborn Czech Social Democratic Party. Then chairman Jirí Horák awarded him an executive post. In 1993 he stood for chairmanship of the party but was defeated by Miloš Zeman. In 2000, he finished fourth in elections to the Senate of the Czech Republic in the Prague 8 district, finishing behind the Communist candidate. Paroubek served in high position in the municipal government of Prague for over 14 years, and specialised in city finance.
Prime Ministership
In August 2004 Paroubek was appointed minister of regional development in Stanislav Gross's government. After a government crisis in early 2005 sparked by Gross's personal finance affairs Paroubek succeeded him to become the 6th prime minister of the Czech Republic on the 25th of April, 2005.
On 13 May 2005, Paroubek's government passed a vote of confidence in the parliament. All 101 coalition-party members supported the government, while the 98 opposition members and one independent voted against.
Paroubek's government, which was little changed from Gross's, led the country to the parliamentary elections of June 2006. Paroubek claimed he wanted to work on tax cuts, conflict-of-interest laws, the 2006 budget and deregulation of apartment rental.
On July 30, 2005, the CzechTek free techno party was broken up by around 1,000 riot police using tear gas and water cannons, claiming the revellers had damaged private property. These action left around 80 people and several police officers injured, causing public protests in front outside the Czech interior ministry. The Prime Minister had spoken in favour of the action beforehand and later defended it, stating that the participants were "not dancing children but dangerous people", but was criticised for the raid by President Václav Klaus. Opposition parties and the media took this action as an opportunity to condemn the government, with some drawing comparisons between the actions of Paroubek's government and crackdowns against students by the communist government in 1989.
In autumn 2005, Paroubek nominated David Rath, then president of Czech Medical Chamber, for the position of Health Minister. Václav Klaus refused to appoint Rath to the position due to a perceived conflict of interest; a hot legal argument followed as to whether Rath could resign from the Chamber only after he was appointed Minister until Rath admitted defeat and resigned first. During the argument the President accused Paroubek of lying to him about how he solved his own formal conflict of interests on being appointed a minister in Gross's government. Paroubek resigned from several functions after the appointment, while Klaus claimed that he would never had appointed him had he known he still had them.
Role in the Czech legislative election, 2006
Paroubek was selected the election leader for 2006 and in the mid-May CSSD congress was voted the new chairman by an uncontested 90%. The election campaign was highly contrastive, especially because of strong animosities between the CSSD, ODS and their respective leaders.
The so called "Kubice's Report" had an important impact on the elections and especially the post-elections talks. Jan Kubice was a high police officer for investigation of organized crimes. His report accused Paroubek of contacts within the criminal underground and of pedophilia. The report was initially classified and was presented to the proper commission of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament, but was made public four days before polls. No information from this report has been proved. The publication of the report caused Paroubek to make a strong statement immediately after the elections. He stated "ODS did not abhor breaking many laws and made it on purpose four days before the elections to avoid establishing of this evident and repeated breaking of legal order. (...) I feel a duty to announce that democracy in this country incurred a hard intervention comparable maybe only with February 1948. Only with that difference that a blue totality looms." Paroubek later publicly apologized for these comments.
Although CSSD's results in the pre-election polls were at just 10 pct when Stanislav Gross resigned as Czech Prime Minister, the CSSD received 32.3 pct in the elections to finish runner-up to the ODS. Upon the result, Paroubek said: "We have not lost, our party was the second that won."
Paroubek was criticized for unanimously speaking for all his party's members in parliament, stating that they would not vote in the secret casting of votes of confidence and for deniyng the tri-coalition programme prior to its release. He said that they would not support the programme, even though no programme proclamation had been made at the time.
paroubek has stated on numerous occasions that he was confident he would be given second chance of forming a government, which led many people to suppose he intended to obtain that outcome from the very start.
On 9 September Paroubek released a document claiming it showed that the ODS planned to discredit him. Paroubek refused to name the source of this paper.
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