Rider fever

The practice of attaching unrelated clauses to bills in Parliament has attracted unusual attention because of all the riders tacked on to a supplementary bill on bankruptcy. One MP wants to use a rider to institute a complete ban on smoking in restaurants. Another wants to increase the tax breaks for supplementary pension contributions. ČSSD sees the bankruptcy bill as a way to return "tunneling" to the penal code and to finally approve social-security caps. Riders can be a blessing or a curse, depending on where you stand. Deputy Chief Justice Eliška Wagnerová of the Constitutional Court would ban them. They're probably here to stay, but the more there are of them, the greater the chance that the core bill will be rejected. Unless MPs strip out some of the more-dubious add-ons in the third reading, implementation of bankruptcy reform could again be delayed. [Czech Republic insurance anti-smoking]