Právo: Klaus uses state decoration as private award for Kaczynski

Prague, Jan 23 (CTK) - The bestowing of the Order of the White Lion, Czech supreme state decoration, by President Vaclav Klaus on his Polish counterpart on Thursday again aroused the question of state decorations being used by officials in their private political campaigns, daily Pravo writes Saturday.

The Presidential Office then said Klaus has bestowed the decoration on Lech Kaczynski for his outstanding merits in favour of the Czech Republic, commentator Alexandr Mitrofanov writes.

Klaus repeatedly emphasised that Kaczynski is the right man to be given the order.

"We hold in esteem his positions and opinions as well as the bold way he has presented them," Mitrofanov quotes Klaus as saying.

The whole course of the Klaus-Kaczynski talks on Thursday, however, testified to Klaus highly respecting Kaczynski mainly for their identical political views on the EU, Mitrofanov says.

Quite recently the two acted as "the last of the Mohicans" resisting to the EU's Lisbon Treaty's adoption. Both were eventually forced to give in and add their signatures to the treaty, Mitrofanov writes.

The Order of the White Lion has now served as an instrument to show and emphasise that though Klaus and Kaczynski have lost their struggle in face of the EU, they would not allow their opponents to gain the upper hand, at least for the time they head their respective countries and have a chance to bestow awards on each other, Mitrofanov writes.

The signals Klaus and Kaczynski have sent to Brussels are very eloquent. Klaus said he thinks "nothing at all" about the new posts of the EU president and foreign minister [introduced by the Lisbon treaty and opposed by him until the last moment].

Along with Kaczynski, he criticised the EU's insufficient aid to the earthquake-hit Haiti. He compared the previous practice of the EU's humanitarian aid being coordinated by the presiding country's prime minister, with the fresh first experience with the new top EU functionaries, and praised the previous system as better, Mitrofanov writes.

True, the two critics of the EU may be right in this case. What is disputable, however, is the use of the top state decoration in their private political struggle, Mitrofanov says.

On the one hand, Czechs should be proud of the supreme state order and should not be indifferent to the way it is used by politicians. On the other hand, a brief glance into the White Lion order's history reliably breaks any illusions in this respect, Mitrofanov writes.

Not only that under the Communist regime the order was bestowed on figures such as Fidel Castro, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Muammar Gaddafi, Mengistu Haile Mariam and Yasser Arafat. As early as 1926, in the democratic inter-war Czechoslovakia, the Order of the White Lion was bestowed on Benito Mussolini for his positive stand on the [Czech medieval reformist] Hussite movement and on the Czechoslovak legions' operation in World War One, Mitrofanov writes.

Simply, the supreme state decoration is a value that has been permanently emptied by various politicians, he adds.

In spite of this, it would be more appropriate if Lech Kaczynski had received a personal plaque of Klaus or a honorary mention from the Czech president for sharing his view on he EU, different from that prevailing in Czech society, Mitrofanov concludes.