Jiří Paroubek
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| Jiří Paroubek | |
 Jiří Paroubek |
|
| Prime Minister of the Czech Republic | |
|---|---|
| In office | |
| April 25, 2005 – August 16, 2006 | |
| Preceded by | Stanislav Gross |
| Succeeded by | Mirek Topolánek |
| Born | August 21, 1952 Olomouc |
| Residence | Prague |
| Chairman of ČSSD | |
| Preceded by | Stanislav Gross |
| Succeeded by | incumbent |
| Political party | ČSSD |
| Spouse | Zuzana Paroubková |
| Children | son Jiří |
| Website: http://www.paroubek.cz | |
Jiří Paroubek (IPA: [ˈjir̝i: ˈparɔu̯bɛk]) listen (born 21 August 1952 in Olomouc) is a Czech politician, chairman of the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD). From April 25, 2005 to August 16, 2006, he was prime minister of the Czech Republic.
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[edit] Early career
Paroubek entered politics at the age of 18, in 1970, right after beginning his studies at the University of Economics, Prague. That year he joined the Czechoslovak Socialist Party, a member party of the Czechoslovak National Front. Before he left the party in 1986, he reached the lower levels of the party leadership.
As such he attracted the attention of the state secret police (StB) and was contacted by them three times. He was assigned the cover name Roko (after Paroubek's pet parakeet), but after 1982 was left alone, since he "did not have enough potential and contacts".
He served his military service (one year) as an army food services supervisor in the southern Bohemian city of Prachatice.
After graduating in 1976, Paroubek worked as the chief economist for several state companies including the restaurants holding (Restaurace a jídelny); this was notorious for bad service and corruption among employees and has been used to criticise Paroubek.
Right after the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, Paroubek joined the newly reborn Czech Social Democratic Party. Chairman Jiří Horák awarded him an executive post. In 1993, he was defeated by Miloš Zeman in ČSSD chairmanship elections. In 2000, he finished fourth in elections to the Senate of the Czech Republic in Prague 8 district, even behind the Communist candidate [1]. Over 14 years Paroubek served in high position in municipal government of Prague and specialised on city finance.
[edit] Prime Ministership
In August 2004 Paroubek was appointed minister of regional development in Stanislav Gross's government and after the government crisis in early 2005 caused by Gross's personal finance affair he succeeded him to become the prime minister on 25 April 2005.
On 13 May 2005, Paroubek's government passed a vote of confidence in the parliament. All 101 coalition-party members supported the government, while the 98 opposition members and one independent all voted against.
Paroubek's government, which was little changed from Gross's, led the country to the parliamentary elections of June 2006; he was also for a nation-wide referendum on the European constitution but he soon stopped mentioning it after it was defeated in French and Dutch referenda. Paroubek said he also wanted to work on tax cuts, the conflict-of-interest law, the 2006 budget and deregulation of apartment rents.
Paroubek was also generally accused of police brutality during the CzechTek free techno-party. On July 30 2005 the festival was broken up by around 1,000 riot police using tear gas and water cannons, because dancers occupied land that wasn't rent for this action. This action left around 30 dancers and a few police officers injured and caused public protests in front outside the Czech interior ministry. The Prime Minister had spoken in favour of the action beforehand and later defended it, stating that the participants were "not dancing children but dangerous people"[2]. Opposition parties and media took this event as an opportunity to condemn the government. Later on, all official charges against police were dropped.
In autumn 2005, Paroubek nominated David Rath, the president of Czech Medical Chamber, for the position of Health Minister. However, President Václav Klaus refused to appoint him on the basis of conflict of interest; about a month's hot legal argument followed as to whether Rath could resign from the Chamber only after he is appointed Minister, until Rath admitted defeat and resigned first. During the argument, President accused Paroubek of lying to him about how he solved his own formal conflict of interests on being appointed a minister in Gross's government: Paroubek resigned from several functions after the appointment, while Klaus claimed that he would never had appointed him had he known he still had them.
[edit] Role in the Czech legislative election, 2006
Paroubek was selected the election leader for 2006 and in the mid-May ČSSD congress was voted the new chairman by an uncontested 90%. The election campaign was highly contrastive, especially because of strong animosities between ČSSD and ODS and their respective leaders.
So called Kubice's Report had an important impact on the elections and especially the post-elections talks. Jan Kubice is high police officer for invastigation of organized crimes. His report blamed Paroubek of contacts with crime underground and of pedophilia. The report was firstly classified secret and was presented to the propper commission of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament, but it went public four days before polls. No information from this report has been proved. The publication of report forced Paroubek to make a strong statement immediatelly after the elections. He said "ODS did not abhor breaking many laws and made it on purpose four days before the elections to avoid establishing of this evident and repeated breaking of legal order. (...) I feel a duty to announce that democracy in this country incurred a hard interventeion comparable maybe only with February 1948. Only with that difference that a blue totality looms." [3] (See also video-file link in the bottom External links section.) Paroubek later publicly apologized for these comments.
Although ČSSD's results in pre-election polls were low at 10 pct when Stanislav Gross resigned as Czech Prime Minister [4], ČSSD received 32.3 pct in the elections to finish runner-up to ODS. Upon the result, Paroubek said: "We have not lost, our party was the second that won."[verification needed]
After the elections, he was criticized, because it was suspected, that he sabotaged and from the beginning meant to sabotage the discussion of the new government.[verification needed] He was also criticized for unanimously speaking for all his party's members in parliament, that they will not vote in the secret castings of the votes of confidence and for deniyng the tri-coalistion programme prior to its release. He said that they will not support the programme, even though no programme proclamation was even made by then.
He has said on numerous occasions he was confident he would be given the second chance of forming a government, which led many people to suppose he intended to obtain that outcome from the very start.
On 9th September he has shown a paper, on which it was written that ODS planned to discredit him. The source of this paper he refused to name and it was pointed out in the media, how similar this paper seems in essence to that which Miloš Zeman put forward some years ago.[verification needed]
[edit] Opinions, Reputation
Paroubek is outspoken in his criticism of opinion polls that are unfavorable toward him, as well as the people who conduct those surveys and media that publish them.
Paroubek has earned the nickname Political Bulldozer(Rudá Svině , Komunistický Prase ,Bradavičník ,Namyšlenej Buran, Muž s pihou).
[edit] External links
- http://www.paroubek.cz - personal website (Czech)
- Brief biography at Czech Government website
- Pre-election profile at Radio Prague website, together with Mirek Topolánek
- Controversial post-election speech (video)
| Preceded by: Stanislav Gross |
Prime Minister of the Czech Republic 2005–2006 |
Succeeded by: Mirek Topolánek |
