US press: Treason charges taint close of Klaus's presidential mandate

New York/London/Berlin, March 5 (CTK) - The treason charges the Czech Senate on Monday voted to file against President Vaclav Klaus is "an unprecedented case" tainting his final days in the post, the U.S. press writes Tuesday.

The charges are, among others, related to "the controversial amnesty" Klaus declared on New Year at the close of his "rocky decade" as Czech conservative president, The Washington Post writes.

Wall Street Journal describes the treason charges as a shocking end of Klaus's long career in public service that started at the end of the then Czechoslovak communist regime in late 1989.

The charges may thwart Klaus's effort to keep political influence after his second and last possible presidential mandate ends on Thursday, March 7.

According to Wall Street Journal, the affair "has little direct impact on Czech markets, but could heighten risk aversion to Czech assets."

Even if Klaus were found guilty, it will have only a little effect in practice, writes The New York Times.

"Even so, analysts said, the Senate’s action tars his legacy, and may inhibit future presidents, who play a largely ceremonial role but have the power to appoint judges, issue pardons and influence foreign policy," the paper writes.

British BBC radio station, in its commentary, said the word "impeachment is a big word for what even the most objective observers of Czech politics will admit was a political attack on the country's most controversial figure - the conservative, fiercely Eurosceptic Vaclav Klaus," commentator Rob Cameron writes.

"The Senate is packed with Mr Klaus's leftist opponents, and it is no accident that most of the 38 senators who voted in favour of the motion were opposition Social Democrats," Cameron writes.

"But few expected the motion to succeed. The fact that it did reflects the depth of feeling over Mr Klaus's New Year's Day amnesty, under which dozens of high-profile corruption cases were put on ice," he writes.

The German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung views Klaus's "scandalous" New Year amnesty as the reason for the Senate voting to file treason charges against Klaus with the Constitutional Court.

The "scandalous massive amnesty that the staunch conservative declared on New Year and that pardoned, among others, a number of suspected financial acrobats and large-scale fraudsters" was the reason behind the Czech upper house's step, the daily writes.

The amnesty harmed not only tens of thousands of investors who thereby lost the right to the compensation for the damage the suspects caused to them, but also all of the Czech Republic's 10 million inhabitants. By his "act of arbitrariness," Klaus dealt a blow to the very foundations of the law-abiding state, the construction of which in the post-communist era has been difficult anyway, Suedeutsche Zeitung writes.

By suing Klaus, the Czech senators want to make it clear that no public official who acts infamously counter to the spirit of democracy can simply go unpunished, the paper adds.

Die Welt calls the charges "a cold shower" for Klaus.

High treason charges are the only way for the president to be challenged at court in the Czech Republic, though the charges may only involve his suspected neglecting his duties or abusing power, Die Welt writes.

Critics have warned that the action formulated as treason charges cannot but mislead foreign observers as to how serious Klaus's mistakes were, the daily adds.