The Prague Post
November 20th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Prague accomodation

Home » Archives » Opinion

Nose dive for now, but feel that afterburn


Postview | Search restaurants | Archives

March 7th, 2007 issue

Probably the most remarkable aspect of the Gripen corruption scandal is that it has emerged in the public eye at all after so many years of dormancy.

There are many who wish it had stayed buried, or at least marginalized, and most likely they’ll get their wish soon after some cursory punishments are handed out to a few symbolic parties. Few believe that the key players suspected of taking kickbacks for their role in approving the order to buy 24 Swedish-made fighter planes in 2001 for the Czech Air Force will really be exposed and prosecuted. (The order, in the end, was canceled after suspicions of influence peddling emerged and the cost of flood recovery made the purchase unthinkable — but, after the heat died down, a new order popped up, this time for the lease of 14 Gripens).
But it’s satisfying to watch at least one member of the club sweat. Jan Kavan, former foreign affairs minister, was only one of many who pushed for the original purchase deal, which would have cost Czech taxpayers 62 billion Kč and irritated U.S. defense industry top brass to no end.
The Yanks had hoped to sell the Czech Republic on the need for U.S.-made fighter jets, arguing, with hard-to-dispute logic, that they were a proven commodity and were already fully integrated into NATO defense, navigation and communications systems.
But the Saab-BAE Systems consortium countered that the new JAS-39C and D fighters, with their high-end avionics and computers, would easily be able to synch with NATO. Besides, as their slick brochures purred, Gripen is “no ordinary fighter.”
The sexy black-and-white images of its cockpit and wing curves went along with another catchy slogan: “Your partner for long-term growth.”
In classy Scandinavian design style, the Gripens feature some lux appointments, too: fully digitized cockpits with three high-definition computer screens telling the pilot all he needs to know, without requiring him to face a single traditional analog control knob. “Don’t need, don’t show,” goes the tagline in the marketing material.
Who could possibly vote for unfashionable American fighters in the face of a blitz like this? Jaroslav Tvrdík, defense minister at the time and a man who would later be credited with gross mismanagement as head of the Czech Airlines, was certainly down for buying. So was a far more incisive and intelligent man, if a vulgar one: Prime Minister Miloš Zeman.
Both have denied any hanky panky went on regarding the purchase deal, contradicting the statements made by Kavan recently and caught on hidden camera by Swedish investigative journalists.
No one expects Tvrdík or Zeman to face any threat of prosecution, and even Kavan, who was stripped of some of his titles in the past week, is not seen as a likely candidate for Pankrác prison, according to one veteran observer of the defense sector who could not hide his glumness.
“It would be nice to see him earn his money, so to speak.”
But that’s not how it works in the Czech Republic, nor in many of the other former Eastern bloc countries — and, to be fair, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair himself is known to have pressured British investigators to back off on an investigation into dubious deals by British defense contractors with Middle Eastern clients.
And, it should be pointed out, Zeman finally was won over because the Gripen deal involved offsets, or projects that contribute to the Czech economy, either through direct investment or through the purchase of Czech goods for export, such as steel for British ships.
Folks tend to wax more poetic when talking about spending from the treasury on toys for the military than they do during embarrassing, if largely symbolic, corruption investigations. After all, cops and accountants are never going to inspire a line like this Gripen marketing team favorite: “The wings of our nations.”
Perhaps we should have settled for a slightly more prosaic one like … “Pull up! Pull up!”


Other articles in Opinion (7/03/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.