Tears for Bohuslav Sobotka

It's been two years since we wrote a fateful Final Word about the role of Chair Petr Rafaj of the ÚOHS antitrust office in the highway-toll tender. The two libel lawsuits filed against us by lawyer Radek Pokorný are still winding their way through the courts. We've been to the Constitutional Court twice, and the highest court in the land ruled in two opposite ways in the two nearly identical cases regarding a temporary injunction by the lower court. Our article remains banned in its entirety, although actions by the police and prosecutors in the interim have substantiated most of what we wrote. When we called Rafaj as a witness, he was miserly with words, and he refuses to say anything to the police, according to today's Právo. Last week in HN, though, he was a regular chatterbox. "Why would they [Kapsch] give me money?" he asked innocently. "They don't like any of our toll decisions." True, they don't like any of the latest toll decisions, but they did indeed like the first ones we wrote about. That was back when Bohuslav Sobotka was still the PM. His departure turned Rafaj's world upside down.