“He respects the constitution and that’s a luxury, because you have the experience of Miloš Zeman and some others for whom the constitution was nothing sacred,” says the chairman of the Committee for Foreign Affairs, Defense and Security Fischer and at the same time Paul praised for a clever foreign policy: “He keeps a certain distance and is able to talk about civilian victims in Israel, which is in a very difficult situation, and even in the Gaza Strip, where it is also necessary to be able to talk about it, and Petr Pavel was able to do that.”
He also praised the initiative in favor of the purchase of artillery ammunition for Ukraine: “The Czech Republic started it.” It has been worked on for a long time and Petr Pavel is part of it. I have to say, that I hear real superlatives from the states that get involved. They want to help with what we have identified as opportunities for additional deliveries from around the world. Just last night, I communicated with Petr Pavlo about it.”
Although he himself said that it is still relatively early to evaluate the president’s performance after one year, he admitted that as far as domestic politics is concerned, “the president as if he was still looking for himself.” According to Fischer we have a problem regarding the defense of the state. “If you look at what the government is promoting, what Defense Minister Jana Černochová is promotingso you have to notice that we are hearing on the other side Andrej Babišwho pretends that we will have two armies here, one army for Jana Černochová and the other for Andrej Babiš and the ANO movement,” warns against criticism of the opposition, which in his view is not constructive. “We have to come to an agreement here, and that would be it the president of the republic as commander-in-chief could, in my opinion, do a great deal of work. I think there is a need for us to realize in time that it can actually be to the detriment of everyone, regardless of whether you are in the party, in the ANO movement, or if we are not party members,” summarized Fischer.
Pavlo’s “lard”
President Pavel received the harshest criticism regarding the power to propose and appoint constitutional judges, which the president shares with the Senate. “There were a number of mistakes, for example, Professor Kysela is actually in a conflict of interest, because he advises the president on who to propose, i.e. in the executive branch, but he has a contract in the Senate in the palace,” warned Fischer against the fact that, according to him, constitutional lawyer Jan Kysela is sitting on two chairs. “The professor has a long-term contract in the senate, then he still works at the university, that’s all fine. But when he works for two institutions that are supposed to check and balance each other, I would say that this is actually a mistake,” he explained. He also drew attention to the proposals of President Pavel’s commission: “The fact that remained in my memory was that there was even supposed to be an agreement, about which we in the Senate knew nothing, that there should be a maximum of two former members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the Constitutional Court. That’s what Prof. Sour. And it struck me, as if we should perhaps have quotas here for those who contracted with the communist regime. That would be nonsense.’
According to Fischer, who himself worked in the office of President Václav Havel, the castle team should run like a Swiss clockwork, “where a very experienced official will need to be at the head. We have so many experienced judges, diplomats, generals, mayors or mayors that the president should have such a figure there, he took a person from business there, so we’ll see. I just think that it is really necessary not to forget that the office of the president is an office and that there should be an official par excellence.”
