On the chopping block

The Czech Republic's new right-wing government has taken power. The lineup features a few ministers - Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek, Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, Justice Minister Jiří Pospíšil - who are reprising their roles from the Mirek Topolánek days. Shamefully, not one of the 15 ministers is a woman. Ethnic minorities are also completely unrepresented at the highest levels of political power - not only in the Cabinet, but in Parliament as well.

The conservatism of this new lineup was apparent before it even took office, in that the Cabinet does not include a post first established by the Topolánek government, that of human rights and minorities minister. In the four years of its existence, this post was held by Green Party appointees, first Džamila Stehlíková and then Michael Kocáb, who is now the country's human rights commissioner. Both made crucial inroads into a number of neglected areas of policy, especially as far as the Roma minority is concerned.

Embarrassingly, the decision to scrap this post - which explicitly refers to minorities as part of its agenda - comes as the Czech Republic takes up the presidency of the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015, a project through which some European governments have made "unprecedented" declarations of political commitment to improve the socio-economic status of Roma.

The Decade project involves governments, intergovernmental organizations and Roma civil society - unlike the new Cabinet. Its 21st-century orientation is signaled by the fact that gender mainstreaming is a Decade "core issue." Women's rights are even one of the priorities of the Czech Decade presidency - priorities approved, of course, by the previous caretaker government of Jan Fischer. Unfortunately, the Czech authorities allocated the Czech Decade presidency a budget so miniscule that those charged with pulling it off have uncomplainingly been going hat in hand for months to private donors, and even some of the other governments involved, to make sure the whole thing will come off.

As with his all-male Cabinet, Prime Minister Petr Nečas is unembarrassed by any of this and has been very clear on why the human rights and minorities post is being scrapped: The ministry is a "luxury" the country cannot afford. The same goes for social expenditures such as child benefits, parental leave benefits, unemployment benefits and support for the disabled. Ask any of the gentlemen in the Cabinet why they are cutting this or that, and the answer will involve the global recession and Greece. That is a curious reading of the facts indeed.

Many commentators have pointed out that the Czech Republic is making it through the current economic debacle with flying colors. ČEZ, the country's largest corporation and energy provider (70 percent state-owned, by the way) made it through last year with record profits and additional help from taxpayers, who are financing the construction of coal-burning power plants. Unlike gender equity, human rights and minorities, the "luxury" of more pollution is not on the chopping block.

As if this all weren't enough, the Cabinet also includes two "wild cards" in the form of parties new to government: TOP 09 and the populist Public Affairs (VV). During the parliamentary campaign, VV took a page from the extreme-right playbook, sending out "patrols" in Prague to harass what they described as "socially inadaptable" people, videotaping the results of their confrontations and posting them on the Web. The tactic was dropped after the Green Party and Christian Democrats reminded the public of the similarities between such behavior and the militias employed by the Communist and Nazi parties. That did not stop 10 percent of the public from voting for VV - fewer than those who voted for the Social Democrats or the Communists - but enough to get them into the right-wing Cabinet and head the interior, education, regional development and transportation ministries. What they will do there, only time will tell.

Those who followed Nečas' performance on human rights as labor and social affairs minister in the Topolánek government will not be surprised by any of this. It was Nečas' acts of bad faith that led former Human Rights Commissioner Petr Uhl to resign from the Government Human Rights Council in 2007. Nečas was responsible for making sure various proposals approved by the council would never be put before the government for consideration as procedure required.

One proposal, interestingly enough, concerned removing gender bias from the language of the statutes governing the various advisory groups to the government. The other concerned civilian oversight of the police and was the product of many years of work. As Uhl said in his letter of resignation:

"The government violated its own rules of order and the statutes of the Human Rights Council, expressing disrespect for its own advisory bodies and, in the case of the motion to establish an independent body to prosecute crimes committed by the police, disrespect for several years of work and cooperation between the council's Committee against Torture, the council and the ministries."

Not exactly a good history for a prime minister who claims he wants to put government on the straight and narrow.

Then again, we have only to look at current Labor and Social Affairs Minister Jaromír Drábek to understand where these boys are coming from: the energy industry and the Chamber of Commerce, to be exact. There is not a lot of "social affairs" experience on Drábek's CV, unless hobnobbing as a board member of Eurochambres is supposed to count.

This October, the government will be reporting to the UN in Geneva on how well it is upholding its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Article 7 of that convention reads: "States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the political and public life of the country and, in particular, shall ensure to women, on equal terms with men, the right ? to participate in the formulation of government policy and the implementation thereof and to hold public office and perform all public functions at all levels of government."

In its report to the UN submitted last year, the government noted that women are most represented at local level in the Czech Republic, with 25 percent of local offices held by women. The committee responded as follows:

"The report is silent on measures taken by the State party to increase the representation of women in elected and appointed bodies, as recommended by the Committee [five years ago]. ... Women are also significantly underrepresented in the diplomatic and foreign services. Please elaborate on criteria and process for appointment and promotion of women in diplomatic services and obstacles identified to their participation in the highest diplomatic ranks, as well as any measures taken or envisaged to increase the participation of women."

By now I would bet the task of drafting the government's response to this committee has probably fallen to a lower-ranking official. Maybe it's even a woman. Whoever it is, that person now has the unenviable task of diplomatically phrasing the following message:

"Dear committee, no measures have been taken. We may have inherited these obligations from our predecessors, who signed on to this convention, but frankly, we just don't give a damn."

- The author is the director of the Women's Initiatives Network at the Peacework Development Fund.

Gwendolyn Albert can be reached at
features@praguepost.com