Germany and Czech Republic, two bordering countries and such an enormous difference in politics, but also in civil society. After just a few weeks of media pressure, Christian Wulff - german president, stepped back at the end of this week. His own past, german political culture and highly developed level of civil society in Germany forced him to do so. It turned out, that yet as president of Lower Saxony, he was in contact with several important German entrepreneurs, from who he reportedly was receiving gifts, financial benefits and discounted credits. When newspapers Bild prepared coverage of the president's unknown past, he reportedly was pushing on the newspaper's director to drop publishing the articles. On top of all that, as a member of the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen he accepted a "gift" in form of discount on car Skoda Yeti (quite a graceless car, btw). All in all, pretty "serious" wrongdoing for politicians in Germany.
Now roll the same situation into the Czech Republic. What a joke, what Wulff did, that's for total beginners! Probably would get covered by two, three articles somewhere on page 15 and two days after you would not hear about that at all. We run a different league here! To get to the top page of national media and stay there for at least a few days you have to steal hundreds of millions Czech Crowns from public budgets, assign a brutally overpriced public procurement deal to your own, your wife's or at least a friend's company. You have to be corrupted from bottom to the top to get enough attention! The beauty of the whole is, that you will perhaps be laundered on first pages of the national papers for a few days, but you will be allowed to stay in the game. However we did have a very few exceptions...
What I so far did not hear is, if Wulff did cause any loss of public money? He did perhaps accept something from somebody, but did that result in f.e. overpriced public procurement? That's the elementary variable i always want to hear - if some of my money were stolen. Rolling the Wulff's case into czech rules of the game - he did nothing.
Dear Mr. Wulff, please move to the Czech Republic - you will be one of the most honest guys acting in the czech political morass.