Delaying the bad news

A few days after the parliamentary elections in Oct. 2021, Bohemia Energy went out of business. The timing led to speculation that the government of Andrej Babiš had kept it quiet as a way to avoid negatively affecting the election outcome. Petr Gazdík of STAN and Petr Hladík of KDU-ČSL were among those who claimed that the government knew that there were problems. Since the EU elections two weeks ago, two major announcements have been made. Liberty Ostrava filed for bankruptcy on June 12 and said it didn't have money for wages. And then yesterday, onsemi announced plans for an investment of up to $2bn. In both cases, Industry Min. Jozef Síkela met soon before the announcement with the owner or top manager. In the case of Liberty, it's clear why Síkela might have wanted the bad news to be delayed. It's less clear in the case of onsemi, but if Síkela wants to give it full investment incentives of $550m, as he indicated last night, that too could be something voters have trouble digesting.