Why Bartuska?

A few readers wondered whether Václav Klaus should have been included on our list of Czechs who need to be taken very seriously, but it was lesser-known Energy Amb. Václav Bartuška who elicited the bigger doubts. Why include Bartuška? Because he's the only Czech official who routinely uses his position to issue warnings about where existing policies are leading us. His admonitions about the need for energy independence are the most vocal, but he also speaks about the unsustainability of the consumer society, the degeneration of the democratic process and the incongruity in the CR of wanting a knowledge-based economy but not doing anything to create it. The West, he says, is heading toward a moment of no longer being the master of its own destiny. Bartuška's power is minimal, but his influence is steadily rising. Which is of course why some powerful people want to shut him up.