All in the family

Prague's probable next mayor, Bohuslav Svoboda of ODS, has drawn up a fresh slate of candidates for the city council as a way to counter suspicions that the same old people will be calling the shots at city hall. Most notable on the list is a certain Ale-ksandra Udženija, who not only has been linked politically to Roman Janoušek and Tomáš Hrdlička, but also has an interesting bloodline of her own. She's the daughter of Václav Klaus's good friend Ranko Pecič and the sister of the longtime girlfriend of CEO Petr Žaluda of Czech Railways. Žaluda is of course buddies with Martin Roman of ČEZ, who funds Václav Jr.'s school, is brother to the head of the municipal-services company Pražské služby, and is son-in-law to Klaus's longtime friend and former minister Karel Dyba. You might say it's all one big happy family. Or perhaps more precisely, an extended dynasty of municipal and national proportions.