Three feet under

Things were looking bad for Mirek Topolánek on Saturday. The police were going after him for alleged loan fraud at his old company, VAE, and Jiří Paroubek was accusing ODS of running a smear campaign. The tables are starting to turn, though. The "smear" campaign is increasingly looking like an attempt by Paroubek himself to divert attention from even more-serious matters, and the loan-fraud issue is turning into an indictment of Prague city hall, where Paroubek was the powerful deputy mayor for economics. In accusing Topolánek of fraud, Paroubek was exploiting the general ignorance of how things like bills of exchange and loan collateral work. VAE's loan transactions were probably entirely legitimate, even if all the undocumented back- scratching by friendly businessmen and politicians wasn't. Topolánek certainly won't come out of this unscathed, but the bigger effect will likely be another nail in Paroubek's sinking coffin. [Czech Republic ČSSD ODS prime minister premier Eltodo]