The government certainly did not sell me to the general, Babiš’s attack is rejected by Pavlova’s possible chancellor
If the Czechs elect Petr Pavel as president this weekend, Jana Vohralíková, who now holds the same position in the Senate, will become his office assistant. Her family suffered under the communist regime, her father was sentenced to uranium mines. Nevertheless, Vohralík does not mind Pavlo’s former membership in the Communist Party. Aktuálně.cz also asked for an interview with Tünde Bartha, the eventual chancellor of Andrej Babiš. So far no response.
Presidential candidate Andrej Babiš says that the government supplied you to Petru Pavl and that you are a controversial lady from Senate President Miloš Vystrčila, who awarded contracts in a strange way. He stated this in the Sunday debate on Czech Television.
He also said there that ODS sold me.
How would you react to him?
I was elected to the Senate by former chairman Jaroslav Kubera from ODS. When Mr. Vystrčil came after him, he even told me that he didn’t choose me. In the end, we were able to work together. I can’t imagine that Vystrčil would sell anyone. I reject such a claim. It showed well how Babiš imagines state administration. The government certainly didn’t sell me out, and there wasn’t even a hint of a situation where someone wanted me to sneak in with Pavlov.
How did you and Petr Pavlo find each other?
Years ago, when I was the chairman of the non-profit organization Czech Council for Children and Youth and he was the chief of the general staff. We organized the Bambiriáda festival. Youth organizations from all over the Czech Republic came to Prague for three days to demonstrate their activities. At that time, we were dealing with how we would provide them with food. Someone thought the military could help us. We went to the general staff and I asked Pavel if they would make us a field kitchen. He liked it, so the army built it there for ten years.
Did Bambiriáda influence the fact that Pavel approached you to become his potential chancellor?
Probably not. I remembered it well. Before NATO left, they offered us an exhibition of ten years of the festival in front of the General Staff, and he himself came to open it. When I reminded him years later, he remembered Bambiriad, but not our meeting. Now I was recommended to Pavlo by Jan Bubeník, the student leader from November 1989, and other people from the wider team.
Who else recommended you?
I have experience in non-profit organizations and the business sector. For example, the rector of the Czech University of Life Sciences gave me a reference, where I was there for six years and we built buildings and infrastructure there for three billion crowns from European funds. Other references were given by the vice presidents of the Senate and the former Minister of Culture Václav Jehlička. I also managed European funds with him.
But last year, the Senate examined your office’s procurement. Did Pavel ask you that?
In that context, four inspections took place in the Senate, including an external audit. He asked me about it and got the results of an external audit.
According to the inspection, there was no violation of the law, the audit of the Supreme Audit Office is still pending. In addition, from January 2020 to March 2022, 60 employees left the Senate out of two hundred. Why so much?
Some died, some moved. When I came to the Senate office, the upper chamber functioned differently. It met once every five weeks, and in the meantime the palaces in quotation marks belonged to the staff. Within half a year after my arrival, Chairman Kubera died, in the next two months came covid, lockdown, legislative emergency. It met remotely every week. Nothing was prepared because those people had no impulse to change for years. Most often they answered that they would not do it because it had never been done. I haven’t fired a single person in eight months. And even those actually dismissed were up to ten within three years.
You also faced suspicions of a conflict of interest. Hospodářské noviny described , when the senate office paid 60 thousand crowns for a musical performance by the company Melody Booking, which is co-owned by your son. how was it
This was the fee for the band that performed at the traditional meeting of senators with citizens in Valdštejnská Garden.
Wasn’t your son’s company brokering the band?
I keep saying it all the time. When doing such a big event, find an external production that will come up with a proposal. We want a program for different age groups and for ensembles to come from the region. Christ, 60 thousand is not a public contract. All contracts for which Mrs. Nedoma gave suggestions are not public by law. (Former head of human resources in the Senate, Anne-Marie Nedoma, accused Vohralíková of bullying and raised the issue of suspicious contracting. Vohralíková and some senators claim that she did it out of personal dissatisfaction.)
The media made a lot of denials about the disadvantageous contracts of Miloš Zeman’s presidential office. The head of the Lanská obory Miloš Balák, subordinate to the head of the office Vratislav Mynář, was convicted for influencing a contract worth 200 million crowns. Can you guarantee that such things will not happen for you?
What can I say to you? The band’s 60,000 fee cannot be compared to Mr. Mynar’s deals. Do you think I was waiting for an opportunity in the Senate when I had billions flowing through my hand before? That I was waiting for me to come to my senses in the Senate? Not really. The external audit concluded that neither the law nor internal regulations were violated in any case.
Jana Vohralíková, potential chancellor of the presidential candidate Petr Pavel. | Photo: Jakub Plíhal
If you were to become chancellor of the castle, can we expect you to audit the contracts awarded by the current employees of the Office of the President of the Republic?
There is little information from public sources about the office of the President. I would definitely do audits of two contributory organizations – Prague Castle and Lán. The most money flows into the Prague Castle Administration and the Ropes, so I think it’s good to look at their functioning first.
You said that you want to rebuild the presidency into a professional one that will operate transparently. What do you mean by that?
I think that a lot of bad things in the world are caused by the mixing of the roles of politics and state administration. I take an official as a professional manager who is supposed to ensure an effectively functioning office and support – in the case of this president – so that he can only do his mission. Offices are also often written by people in a difficult life situation and screaming for help. For me, it is important that the office cares, even if it cannot help. I would like to deal with them, answer them and at least help guide them. Let them know that we understand their problems. Under the auspices or with the participation of the president, we can organize various activities, be it debates or round tables.
Would you introduce any more news?
During the time that I have been in the Senate, there has never been a meeting of all four chancellors – i.e. the government, the Chamber of Deputies, the Castle and me. But sharing experiences is always useful and inspiring.
Why did you accept Peter Pavel’s offer? What did he call you?
If our society is to begin to change, we must live up to what we say. The general really embodies order and calm.
Is this password your own too?
Certainly. The fish always stinks from the head. What the head shows and radiates is then projected into society.
Did Pavlov’s communist past not bother you? Your father was convicted in the 1950s and the rest of the family didn’t have an easy life because of that.
Dad was convicted in the 1950s for collaborating with British-American intelligence, spent 11 years in uranium mines. They let him go home to die on amnesty. Mom was classified as the daughter of a kulak. In reality, she was the daughter of a small farmer, but she couldn’t go to medicine because of that. She and her dad got together after he was released. She kept him alive for the next 22 years with her fierceness. Our family was always on the lookout for State Security. It happened to us that we came home and things were scattered because the agents were looking for documents in them. I was suspended from school because of my activities in the underground church.
That is why it is surprising that you are able to pass over Peter Pavel’s membership in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
Ours never got bitter. Dad always said not to judge the past when we weren’t a part of it. He himself knew people serving the regime who saved the prisoners’ lives. I decided to meet with the general. We talked about it and I finally told him that I was ready not to judge his past and that I believed he had made up for it.
The head of Zeman’s office, Mynář, never received the necessary security clearance. Pavel stated that he is demanding a top secret clearance from his chancellor. Do you believe you can get it?
The amount of the background check is related to how classified documents one gets access to. Mr. General and I talked about the request for a background check on the confidential level. I have been requesting it since the beginning of January. It doesn’t fit my current position, but it worked. I don’t know what the internal rules are at the Castle. If I need a background check for another degree, about it.
You end your term in the Senate on February 28. What will you do if Petr Pavel does not win the election?
I mean the offer seriously, and I didn’t want to keep the Senate as an insurance policy. I didn’t want anything to happen if it didn’t work out. The chairman pushed to answer it with the words: ‘You are embarking on existential uncertainty, what will you do if it doesn’t work out?’ I said that I would go and sell at Lidl. That’s how I’ve always been in life. I was never tied to any position, that was my great freedom for years.
So you don’t have a backup plan?
I don’t have and I don’t have time to do it. Maybe I’ll actually go to Lidl.
Video: Linda Bartošová’s interview with presidential candidate Petr Pavel (January 4, 2023)
Interviews with presidential candidates – Petr Pavel | Video: Jakub Zuzánek, Aktuálně.cz