Prague, Jan 17 (CTK) – Various disinformation is being intentionally spread about former Academy of Sciences head Jiri Drahos and incumbent Czech President Milos Zeman on social networks before the presidential runoff that will be held in ten days.
The fake news on Drahos include him abusing little boys, stealing inventions from his colleagues and having been a Communist secret police (StB) agent, while speculations about Zeman revolve mainly around his poor health.
A recently founded website entitled PoPravde.cz is to prove such assertions about Drahos false, while Zeman is generally defended by his spokesman Jiri Ovcacek.
The website’s authors, for example, stress that Drahos has a negative screening certificate that rules out his cooperation with StB. They also say that the Centre for the Documentation of Totalitarian Regimes and the Archive of Czech Security Forces have rejected such a claim.
Drahos’s stance on illegal migration and the migrant quotas is another theme that his opponents voice on social networks.
In a mocking style, he is being labelled as a “welcomer” and “do-gooder,” although he had said before the first election round that he believed aid in the countries of migrant’s origin was the solution and had called for controls of the EU’s external border.
Furthermore, Drahos is associated with The Club of Rome and the Freemasons, where the former association is linked to theories of international conspiracy and plans for the New World Order.
PoPravde.cz says the last time Drahos’s name appeared in connection with the Club of Rome was in 2008 and that it was paradoxical that Milos Zeman was its founding member.
In a statement for the media, the Czech Learned Society also backed Drahos rejecting mendacious claims on him as its member and warranting his utter scientific and moral integrity.
Concerning Zeman’s health, fake news before last summer included that he might need to have his leg amputated and, later, that he had cancer and would die within seven months. Both claims were rejected by the Presidential Office and Zeman’s physician.
Just before the presidential election first round’s start, a hoax began spreading as to Zeman’s voters not needing to vote for Zeman since he automatically proceeded to the second round as the current head of state. Zeman’s office later alerted media to leaflets containing this fake news being distributed to the letterboxes of some people in the Moravia-Silesia region. The Czech Interior Ministry subsequently declared it was disinformation.
