By Daniela Lazarova

The fate of the premier's right hand man, finance minister Ivan Kocarnik, is a matter of heated dispute. TYDEN magazine, which has featured him on its cover page, notes that over 70% Czechs are highly disatisfied with Kocarnik's performance in office and would welcome news of his dismissal. The days of the longest serving finance minister in Central and Easter Europe, dubbed Uncle Scrooge, may well be numbered, the weekly says. Both the opposition and a part of the governing coalition are calling for his head. The tabloid dailies have torn him to shreds, the Mlada Fronta Dnes supplement has shown him shovelling earth, predicting his imminent fall from grace. He refuses to go of his own accord and is reportedly "not the stuff of which martyrs are made." Is Kocarnik guilty or a victim? TYDEN asks. The blunders which led to the present economic problems were not restricted to the finance ministry, which makes Kocarnik as guilty as the rest of Cabinet, the author says. His lone demise would not make much sense and would only be an "apperitif" to the opposition, signalizing the begining of the end for this governing coalition. The Premier needs a finance minister whom he can fully rely on, and in the ODS there is no one else on the horison -which is why the Premier is not willing to sacrifice him. Although his seat is shaking under him it would appear that Kocarnik is a cornerstone whose fate is inextricably linked to the fate of the whole Cabinet, TYDEN says.

Although finance minister Ivan Kocarnik is the Cabinet's black sheep this week, TYDEN's business and finance section has targeted the performance of trade minister Vladimir Dlouhy, who has also found himself slipping down the popularity ladder.
Shortly after announcing blanket import deposits on all imported consumer goods the trade minister was unable to resist pressure from some importers and decreed 23 exceptions from the anti-import measure, TYDEN says. He also announced his intention to "make use of the activities of the Czech Moravian Guarantee and Development Bank to help those small and medium sized importers who would be hard put to meet the new trade restrictions". So what is the point of trade restrictions which are not supposed to effect importers? TYDEN says, predicting that at this rate the package of trade barriers will soon come to resemble a sieve.

For its part, the PRAGUE POST notes that the belated revisions have not only made a lot of bad blood between rival firms, they have been questioned by the media as well. For instance importers of unprocessed tobacco leaves were graciously exempted from the import deposits. That helps the country's largest cigarette producer Tabak, owned by US based Phillip Morris. The firm has an approximate market share of 75% and it has not gone unnoticed that Philip Morris made sizeable contributions, to the tune of 3 million crowns each, to all three government coalition parties.

Dlouhy has also had his knuckles rapped for overriding agriculture minister Josef Lux on the issue of promised restrictions of foreign- import licences. In what TYDEN calls the "happening" of the week Czech fruit growers distributed several tons of fresh fruit for free to citizens in Prague, Brno, Pilsen and a number of other cities -in protest of the overly-liberal conditions for importers which are putting Czech fruit growers out of business. The agriculture minister's promises to restrict import licenses were given the thumbs down sign by his long-time rival Dlouhy, so it looks like Czech fruit growers will have no option but to employ free handouts with the rest of their crop as well, the weekly concludes.

Vice premier and agriculture minister Josef Lux is the only politician who has remained unscathed by the onslought of public disatisfaction -indeed while his colleagues have all experienced a slump in popularity - Lux has been climbing steadily higher at the expense of friends and foes alike. Having built up a reputation of being able to crack even the hardest problem and settle any conflict, the wily Lux as the papers have dubbed him, decided to show the public a more responsible attitude than his colleagues of the governing coalition. Having berated them for not effecting personell changes when the boat was rocking, Lux carried out a lone political action -throwing overboard one of his own party's ministers in a show of goodwill to the public. The Prague Post sports a cartoon showing Lux with finance minister Kocarnik and trade minister Dlouhy up in a hot air balloon. Having just thrown his own minister overboard Lux turns on his colleagues with the words " Our man is gone. Now it's your turn". The artistic license is minimal - vice premier Lux has often voiced the view that these two particular ministers should resign , if not to their faces then certainly to the press.

If one wanted to find the word that best describes the Czech republic's current troubles "expectations" would be it, says Daniel Kumermann in the opinion page of the PRAGUE POST. Expectation is at the root of this country's "lousy mood" as President Havel put it and expectations are the essence of the infamous "balicek" or little package of economic measures the government unveiled in mid-April. Expectations are a new concept for the majority of this country's population, Kummermann says. Generations of Czechs grew up without them. Expectations were born out of the end of WWII, and for some after the communist takeover in 1948. Expectations swelled and were quenched in the Prague Spring reform movement dropping to their lowest ebb before they could rise anew in November of 1989. The first post-revolution leaders, who largely came from anti-communist dissident circles, spoke of high expectations but admitted that they would be hidden behind hard sacrifices for years. But they were steamrollered over in the 1992 elections by a group headed by Vaclav Klaus. These new leaders took the public's expectations to new heights -promising a shortcut to Western prosperity by leaving the economy to the "invisible hand of the market". In 1995 Klaus claimed the transformation was over. Then in the run up to elections last year he promised to double the average salary by the year 2,000. The rest is history, Kummermann says. The rosy promises of the early '90s have yet to materialize, and economic growth has slowed down considerably. Yet Klaus and other top politicians don't appear to have learnt their lessons. They have again built high expectations around this "corrective" package of ecnomic measures. Predictions on what will come are hard to make, but either way the people deserve what they get for falling for empty promises one too many times,says the author who is a journalist with the daily Pravo.