Andrej Babiš used his hour and forty-five minutes in Parliament yesterday during debate on a vote of no confidence in his government to give one of his most thorough indictments of previous Czech governments, including one that he was a member of. There was the OKD privatization, Kapsch, IKEM, and what he called the holy trinity of corruption of the previous government - the bitcoin scandal of ex-Justice Min. Pavel Blažek of ODS, the Dosimeter scandal and the PDZ credit-union "money laundering" of people around Petr Fiala. Babiš didn't mention the Net4Gas acquisition of ex-Industry Min. Jozef Síkela, but Vice PM Karel Havlíček did later. At times Babiš seemed to forget that he is now in charge, such as when he said that STAN and TOP 09 both received money from the corrupt Dosimeter system but "are of course not being prosecuted." As Justice Min. Jeroným Tejc emphasized later, neither the cabinet nor justice minister can dictate to prosecutors how they should proceed in specific criminal cases, but the government has the right to determine what it considers important in criminal policy. Babiš's government will be judged in part by whether it decides that combatting such high-level political corruption is indeed important.
