Final Word from Thursday, May 20, 2021



All that was missing at Pavel Zeman's press conference last Fri. was Tom Petty singing, "You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down." Zeman was in essence announcing that he was throwing in the towel as the supreme state prosecutor because of pressure from Justice Min. Marie Benešová, but he wanted to give the impression of just the opposite: His resignation was supposed to be seen as a courageous act of defiance. Ex-Dir. Robert Šlachta of the ÚOOZ organized-crime unit pinpointed sometime in mid-2016 as the moment of Zeman's first big capitulation. As Šlachta briefly explained on Czech TV on Fri. and wrote in greater detail in his book, Zeman initially opposed the police reorganization of 2016 but then reversed himself after Interior Min. Milan Chovanec explained to him that he would be sacked unless he came on board. Šlachta said that when he asked Zeman about this later, Zeman walked away in silence. In calling a protest today, Million Moments for Democracy said that Zeman quit but that it will not back down: It will not hand over the justice system. To whom? From whom? It didn't say. [ Czech Republic judicial judiciary police Television ČSSD a.s. Radek Pokorný reform ]

Glossary of difficult words

defiance - open resistance; bold disobedience;

to pinpoint - to find or identify with great accuracy or precision;

to sack - to dismiss from a position; to fire.

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