Burying Gross

Premier Jiří Paroubek sacked Tomáš Kadlec as CEO of Čepro last week and will remove Zdeněk Doležel today as the head of his office. Both Kadlec and Doležel owed their jobs to Stanislav Gross. There are rumors that Paroubek will launch a full-scale attack on Gross in Sept., with the goal of provoking an early ČSSD party congress for removing him as chairman. What's mainly at stake isn't so much the makeup of the post-election government, but rather the candidate lists for the elections themselves. Gross still hasn't recovered from his apartment scandal but is going to face new accusations. Czechs, for example, reportedly got bribes of E21m for Unipetrol. Vladimír Železný also raised the question of why Gross waited to resign until just after the Český Telecom deal was done. Gross might have disappeared from sight, but it will take another shootout before he's dead and buried.