In developed countries, when the president or prime minister makes a decision, an army of pundits and other political groupies besieges the media from all sides in support of the measure. A roughly equal number generally launches a counterattack. In the CR, politicians are increasingly being left to fend for themselves, with the help of only the most loyal of acolytes. How humiliating for Václav Klaus himself to have to go public twice with a defense of his amnesty! Or for one of his top aides, Ladislav Jakl, to be the one who must claim that if the people are disillusioned with regard to the amnesty, it should be because all those poor non-tunnelers were being tortured by the courts for 10, 12 or 14 years without a resolution to their cases. In a developed country, someone else would do this dirty work. But Klaus is all alone. Even most of the non-tunnelers are embarrassed to come forward in defense of their president.