Experts: Beneš Decrees not key issue in Czech presidential runoff

Prague, Jan 21 (CTK) - The postwar Benes Decrees is not an issue of such importance for the present Czech society to significantly influence the result of the presidential election, according to political scientist Bohumil Dolezal and sociologist Jan Hartl whom CTK addressed Monday.

Presidential candidate Milos Zeman, supported by outgoing President Vaclav Klaus, attacked his rival Karel Schwarzenberg over the latter's statements about the Benes Decrees.

Schwarzenberg said postwar Czechoslovak President Edvard Benes "would probably find himself in The Hague today," referring to the International Court of Justice and to the idea of collective guilt. He said the Czech violence against Sudeten Germans after the end of the war would be "condemned as gross violation of human rights" now.

Dolezal said Zeman and Klaus overestimate the importance of the issue of Benes Decrees.

But he said he is surprised that Schwarzenberg was not prepared for this sensitive issue well.

"I can't understand that Schwarzenberg was taken aback that the two buddies would use it against him," Dolezal said.

He noted that this issue was powerful in Czech politics 15 or 20 years ago.

Dolezal said he believes the issue may ifluence only hardcore voters of the Social Democrats (CSSD) and a small part of the voters of the Civic Democrats (ODS).

Hartl, too, said the issue of the decrees and the postwar transfer of Sudeten Germans seemed dead and outdated even ten years ago.

Sociological data show that "recycling" the issue of Sudeten Germans by some politicians in the recent years was not very successful, he said.

But Hartl pointed out that voters always react to emotional messages that are hard to refute rationally at the end of the campaign.

"I don't consider the issue fatal, but there is little time and it may live its own life, given the compressed, clip form of the campaign," he said.

Hartl said people do not assess merely the opinion itself but also the capability of a presidential candidate to find a way out of a difficult situation in an elegant manner.

After World War Two, Benes signed decrees that provided for the confiscation of the property of collaborators, traitors, ethnic Germans and Hungarians, except for those who themselves suffered under the Nazis. They also formed a basis for the transfer of the two ethnic groups from Czechoslovakia after the war.