Mgr. Jaroslav Kmenta

"One quote by Babiš is worth noting - he repeatedly said: 'You created me. You two corrupt parties... "Is Babiš right about this?" - "I think it's just a political acclamation, a political speech. He actually gave birth to himself. He was born on the basis of huge clientelism, especially with the ČSSD. Because his main entry into the business sphere started sometime in 98'-99', and that was actually with the rise to power of the CSSD. And he had a huge door wide open thanks to the CSSD government, even into business. He was getting and his people were getting into important positions, into state enterprises, then in the petrochemical industry. And by getting his people in there, by having contacts with politicians, he was getting information and was ahead in the future privatisation of these companies. So he wasn't born out of some turmoil between ODS and CSSD, and that he came to sort it out, and that's why he went into politics. I think he went into politics to protect his business, to enrich it with more subsidies and to protect himself from possibly some criminal proceedings."

"And when I and about three or four of my friends at that high school got the idea to start a student magazine, we had huge eyes and a huge appetite. We were kind of active, we did all kinds of sporting events or even social events, so then we wanted to turn that into reporting, reporting on everything. It was just a case of having a set of three or four people who would be happy and willing to write something. That was fine - on paper, we could write that down, or find a typewriter, that was fine. But then you need some infrastructure to print such a magazine and then distribute it. And we asked the school at that time to make available to us the possibility of a xerox machine, which existed in some form at that time. Well, and there, of course, you were already dealing with the reality of that regime, how it worked. Because - it's really ridiculous today, it's unbelievable when you think about it today - but that totalitarian regime was prepared to do everything to moderate that freedom as much as possible just from its point of view. Because the dissemination of unsanctioned printed matter, or, heaven forbid, of views other than support for the Communist Party, was always nipped in the bud, always found out, because the source of the leakage of some such information was actually the Xerox machines. So they were basically under the control of that regime. Not that there were State Security officers or some communist bosses there, but in every institution, and there were several of them, it wasn't just schools, it was health stations, district offices, town offices, you name it, every office had to operate with some such device. So I know from that time that there was somebody in charge who was either directly or indirectly connected with the regime in some way. And there was always a record of who was using the photocopier and what it was being used for and so on. So I suddenly realized that it's not exactly fun, and it's not easy in that former regime, to do something like that. And it was only with the passage of time that I understood the dissident world, how terribly difficult and complicated it was, that actually if they wanted to do this kind of action - to print something and distribute it, what problems they must have had."

"The recipe for a spoiled stomach is: take a mass of people, simmer them for forty years, set some aside in a cool place (like prison), tenderize some on Národní Street (like beat them up), sprinkle three sides with various spices under the brand Hoření – Hoření, that was, I think, the editor-in-chief of Rudé právo, that ultra-terrible newspaper – close your eyes, sleep through the events, and the purge is in the making. So this was on display here in Nymburk at our events. And on the door of the communist church we hung a sign that read: "Comrades, leave, we've had enough."

"I remember... He was a friend of mine from Nymburk, he was not a student at the Faculty of Education, but he was a friend of mine called Josef Hubáček. He lived here on the housing estate, we knew each other as little boys. And he was right on Národní třída, he experienced the hell, the beating by State Security and the riot squad. And he told us the whole story, it made us even angrier at the regime. When we as students started going out to the regions - different small villages and towns, and we started to incite people to stand up to the regime, like we students did. So Pepa Hubacek was the main speaker at those rallies."

"I had this feeling that I wanted to be a journalist, so I tried to publish a student magazine with a bunch of friends at high school. On the one hand, even for that school, it was an activity that would not be advisable to completely moderate or suppress. If a student wants to do something in addition to going to school, that's to be commended. But it was a risky area at the time. If the headmistress had agreed and said, let's write and publish a magazine, she would have created a problem for the totalitarian society of the time, because there would have been some content without state control. And that's what they were terribly afraid of."