Mgr. Ing. Jan Kasal

"The re-election of Václav Klaus. Now, I have to say one thing that may surprise you. I did not find Václav Klaus's first term dramatically bad. I thought it could be worse. The People's Party failed to persuade Petr Pithart to run for a second time. The Christian Democratic Union did not have a uniform opinion on whom to support, because frankly speaking, Professor Švejnar did not seem like a suitable candidate to many. I was trying hard to convince Petr Pithart to run because I would have fought tooth and nail for him. Jan Sokol, same thing; he did not want to run at all. It was a difficult situation. And the actual course of the election... Today, we have a direct election of the President of the Republic. Enter the then Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Mr. Vlček. We had a meeting with the leadership of the Senate in the Chamber of Deputies the night before and it was agreed that the ballot would be secret. Something happened by the morning, I don't know what but I think Paroubek had the biggest say in it, though I'm not sure. Vlček came up with the idea of a public ballot without discussing it with anyone and started taking cues Vojtěch Filip, the chairman of the Communist Party. And it was such an embarrassment that I will probably never forget it. That's when I realised I didn't want to ever experience that again. The previous elections, Havel's and Klaus's first, were not a cultural experience by any means, but this was really extraordinary. If there is any footage, I don't recommend anyone to watch that because they would get completely disgusted."

"The land border was never respected, whether in the pre-1990 arrangement or in 1960 when the administrative structure was upgraded. Speaking for myself, as someone who has lived on the land border all my life (since the border runs between Přibyslav and Žďár nad Sázavou), we were never bothered by the land border. The strongest perception of the land border was among the Brno citizens and those who lived east of Brno. But the very discussion about the regions - and this is related to what I mentioned, that if we had held elections for regional national committees (which could have been called anything else of course) in 1990, the appetite for forming of new regions would have been much less. I believe that if there were to be any further division, there would just be one - namely to form the Olomouc Region. See, Moravia had only two regions for a population of 4 million, North and South Moravia, and that was difficult to administer compared with some Czech regions. I would consider that obvious. Once the discussion opened up, though, there was no end to it really. Apart from the Olomouc region, which was perceived as necessary, lobbyists from various regions started to show off their power and regions were created that might not normally have been. I will mention just two now, with apologies to those who find this repugnant. I think that the Karlovy Vary Region and the Liberec Region did not have to be created."