The fall gals

Does anyone remember Marie Součková? She's the ex-health minister who was charged in 2005 with hiring a lawyer at an excessive rate and without a tender to represent the state in the Diag Human arbitration case. She left politics in disgrace but was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing. A case study for Vlasta Parkanová perhaps? The two share several things in common. Aside from the obvious (both ex-ministers, both women, both tools of others), there is the politically incorrect topic of their intelligence levels. Ignorance is not supposed to be a defense before the law, but it helped Součková. And just as male college students in the U.S. sometimes rate girls as one- or two-coyote ugly, MPs used to talk about remarks in the Chamber that were one- or two-Parkans stupid. In April, two "pawns" in the CS Fondy case were cleared of wrongdoing, because the judge found it unfair to punish them when the masterminds got away. So maybe Kalousek and Háva knew exactly what they were doing by choosing Parkanová as their fall gal.