Final Word from Thursday, January 2, 2014
Unlike Miloš Zeman in his Christmas address last week, Václav Klaus made a few memorable comments in his New Year's talk on TV Prima yesterday. He quoted Václav Havel as saying that the country "is not flourishing," and he repeated his earlier comment about the end of the post-Velvet Revolution regime. Czech society is in a state of stagnation and near-decay, he added pessimistically. At the same time, he said optimistically that the atmosphere is worse than the reality. Things aren't as bad as some people make them out to be, he said. This contradictory message - things are really bad, but not as bad as some people say - is probably only comprehensible to those who realize that, in Klaus's view, there is a specific group of people (not just Babiš and Okamura) who are working to upturn the things that he worked so hard to achieve. It's time for Klaus to stop speaking in riddles and to put names to his enemies. [Czech Republic Tomio Andrej ANO Úsvit/Dawn interview]
Glossary of difficult words
memorable - worth remembering or easily remembered, because of being special or unusual;
to flourish - to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way;
to make something out to be - to try to give a specified impression; to pretend;
to upturn - to upset or overturn;
to speak in riddles - to speak in a way that is difficult to understand.