ODS's love child
If ODS wants to take credit in the run-up to the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution for the democracy and capitalism spawned by the revolution, the political party under Petr Fiala must also take credit for the biggest love child of those 30 years of freedom, Petr Kellner. ODS can't pretend that it has nothing to do with Václav Klaus, Ivan Kočárník and others in the "old" ODS who paved the road to Kellner's riches. Without ODS, there would be no Kellner of today's grandeur, and without Kellner's support in the background, ODS wouldn't have made it as far at it did as a political party. It's bad luck for both Kellner and Fiala that the 30th anniversary of the revolution is arriving just as PPF's image is being run through a public shredder. The preliminary results yesterday of the EU Commission's probe into PPF's telecoms practices are belated confirmation of what anyone with eyes and ears already knew: One of the "values" Kellner so defends is the right to rip Czechs off.
Glossary of difficult words
love child - a child born to parents who are not married to each other;
to spawn - (of a person) to produce (offspring);
grandeur - high rank and social importance;
shredder - a machine or other device for shredding something;
probe - a thorough investigation into a crime or other matter;
belated - coming or happening later than should have been the case;
to rip (someone) off - to defraud or swindle (someone).