Kristýna Drápalová (Prague itself): What role did Pospíšila’s right-hand man Fremr play in corruption?
photo: Kristýna Drápalová’s Facebook/Kristýna Drápalová
POLITICIANS IN THEIR OWN WORDS. m of Prague for Prague to himself on his Facebook on September 15 about corruption
I went to see the court for the first time today. Yesterday we won a court case over front yards. This one is about the same thing. But a little differently: it is about corruption.
Petr Bauer, the owner of two prominent businesses and even more prominent front gardens in the center of Prague, stands before the court. He is accused of bribing an official. And from what is known so far, he was supposed to bribe those officials to prevent the approval of the concept of the front gardens that we were preparing with Adam Scheinherr.
I don’t know who the officials are. And I didn’t even find out today: the trial was adjourned. It is known, however, that a personal inspection of Jiří Fremro took place because of this matter. You may remember this thanks to the famous line from the wiretapping of the Dozimetr case (“Jirko, no worries, when I come to Prague, I can steal”), or as the long-time chairman of the Young Conservatives, convicted of grievous bodily harm and false accusation. However, Fremr himself cannot be that official person, because he was neither an official nor a representative. He was only Jiří Pospíšil’s right-hand man, who after the Dosimetr case doesn’t know him that much, until he somehow cleaned up and as No. 2 on the TOGETHER candidate, he now only posts recipes, animals and memories of Meda on Facebook.
The meeting was adjourned until October. What role Fremr played in the whole thing and who the bribes were supposed to end up with, we will unfortunately only find out after the elections. Not that I don’t have a few tips in my head. But these are just guesses. It’s a special part of the magisterial experience: you’re dealing with something, you’re dealing with emails every day about it, you’re going to meetings, you know about every line in every drawing, you know all the official documents about it – and yet you feel that you’re affecting the whole thing in a completely different way forces and processes about which you know nothing. And only gradually do the various fragments come together for you. It’s like being in a dimly lit room and only gradually feeling what kind of furniture is in it. And sometimes break your knee on something.
One can only argue about most things. Why material is withdrawn from the vote at the last minute. Why will he attend a meeting of the mayor of Prague 1 because of this. How will they hear from the company about the planned inspection. How is it possible that one company did not receive a seizure from an influential official of the city district, and a company twenty times larger does not have a problem. Why doesn’t another official use his authority to stop the perpetual transgressions of one company. Why is it not at all possible to find information somewhere that should be recorded as a matter of course. Why bind the implementation of approved material.
It’s strange to work on something and not know it all for sure. You don’t know if the people you deal with on a daily basis are just a terrible mess, or if they are hiding something from you. If there is bad will behind some mistakes, it’s just a slyness or just a misunderstanding. If I’m stupid because I trust someone, or paranoid because I suspect someone.
I was therefore quite looking forward to today’s trial; could give me the answer to a number of mysteries of the past years. But I understand that Bauer et al. they are doing everything to ensure that the main trial does not take place before the elections. The funny thing is that just this week the Chamber of Commerce invited Bauer to the pre-election debate as an expert on hospitality. Sure, the presumption of innocence applies, but this isn’t the first blemish on Bauer’s reputation. They already became famous for the illegal construction on the house near the Old Town Square, the cocaine party during the strictest lockdown or all kinds of pranks to circumvent the preservation rules. By the way, when funerals are held at the Church of the Holy Savior, coffins are carried into it through their front yard. It blocks the side entrance.
I hope that the court could perhaps uncover something about how the business with public space in the center of Prague operated for many years. Recently, I was tidying up the document that I had collected over the years, and I realized how sad it actually is. I can’t know for sure, but maybe almost everyone who wanted a booth or a front yard in the nicest parts of the center had to pay someone something. Such a parallel permitting system. And whoever didn’t participate in that system didn’t do business. To create a certain type of network. And today’s form of the center of Prague is the result of such sorting. It’s not a very good result.
When I started dealing with front gardens, I didn’t even know this existed. I would be very happy if we could just remove it. But it is quite robust. We managed to tear it off, but it didn’t go away. We also started introducing a new sieve with PRAGUE SOBÚ – one that is official, predetermined and aimed at ensuring that the front gardens and stalls are only where they do not get in the way and look cultured. But it’s also not that its results would somehow be clearly visible. And it is still very much open, according to which decisions will be made in the center of Prague in the coming years.