Czech President Miloš Zeman (pictured on December 7, 2022).
Prague – The neighborhood of former president Miloš Zeman was a structural, in many ways possibly a security problem. The information of Deník N, according to which Zeman asked Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) at a meeting in Lány to co-sign the abolition, which related to the subsidy case of his chancellor Vratislav Mynář and another case connected with the Castle, is the culmination of Zeman's style of presidency, which was powerful and protective towards your own surroundings. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Vít Rakušan (STAN) said this in the Otázky Václav Moravec program on Czech television.
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The Prime Minister refused to add his signature, just like last year. That's when, according to Denik N, Zeman asked him to co-sign the abolition, which would make it impossible to start possible prosecutions in the cases of the shredding of the Vrbět report and the leakage of information from the Security Information Service (BIS) to the Castle. Zeman then stated that he did not ask Fiala for anything like that. On Wednesday, he left the highest constitutional post after ten years, and Mynář left the castle with him.
“Perhaps in the end it shows that, above all, the problem around President Miloš Zeman was bigger than we think,” said the Austrian. The fact that Zeman directed his request quite openly towards his closest collaborator shows that there is a need for a change in the style of the presidency and the understanding of this function, he believes. Fiala has his unequivocal support.
Even the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives and the first vice-chairman of the ANO movement, Karel Havlíček, would not agree with a possible abolition. He stated that Fiala did the right thing in this case.
Abolition can either stop criminal prosecution, which would be the case in the subsidy case in which Mynář is accused, or order that criminal prosecution not even begin in a certain case. On Wednesday, Fiala discussed the request of the outgoing president in secret mode at the cabinet with the ministers present, who supported him in the decision not to sign the abolition.
Mynář has been criminally prosecuted since the spring of 2021 for damaging the financial interests of the European Union and subsidy fraud. The case concerns a six-million grant for the completion of a boarding house in Osvětimany in the Uhersko-Hradišť region, which Mynář's company Clever Management received. According to the police, she did not provide all the information in the application and therefore obtained the money illegally.
The president has the right to grant pardons, amnesties and abolitions. For amnesty and abolition, it needs the co-signature of the Prime Minister, or the signature of a cabinet member authorized by him. In the case of abolition, the president orders that criminal prosecution for a certain crime not be initiated, and if it has already been initiated, but has not yet been legally terminated, that it be stopped.
