Becoming an excuse to Ferdinand Peroutka’s granddaughter. The dispute goes to the Supreme Court

The ministry filed the appeal on Thursday. It was sent both to the District Court for Prague 1, which ruled on the dispute in the first instance, and directly to the Supreme Court, which will now decide on the motion for suspension of enforcement. “The appeal was submitted in a blank form and its wording will be supplemented within the statutory two-month period,” Zdeněk Vojtěch from the press department told ČTK.

The Ministry has previously announced the probable filing of an extraordinary appeal. “We have long believed that a public speech by the President of the Republic cannot be considered maladministration under the Act on Compensation for Damage Caused in the Exercise of Public Power,” the spokesman explained.

At his own request, President Zeman is intervening in the dispute. On Tuesday, after receiving a final verdict, ČTK told his lawyer Marek Nespala that the verdict “contains nothing surprising”. He did not want to comment in advance on possible variants of the president’s further procedure. He wants to inform next week whether the Castle will also invoke a detailed study of the verdict. However, the lawyer has previously stated that an appeal is likely.

Kaslova demands a broader apology

Kaslová is also going to turn to the Supreme Court. She was not satisfied with the July verdict, because she demanded a broader apology for the president’s other words – among other things for the statement about “the fascination of intellectuals with monstrous teachings”. However, the Prague City Court stated that public persons, including Peroutka, must withstand wider criticism.

“An appeal to the negative opinion will certainly be filed,” František Vyskočil, a women’s lawyer, wrote to ČTK today. “The Ministry of Finance must apologize for the president on Tuesday, August 18, which he clearly does not want to do,” he added to the current step of the office.

He jumped out that the ministry has an appeal argument more or less prepared from the case of former Zeman’s adviser Zdeněk Šarapatka. In it, the office is to apologize for the president’s false statement that he fired the man for incompetence. In the Sharapatka dispute, the ministry also asked the Supreme Court to postpone enforcement and the court granted it.

Zeman made his remarks about Peroutek in January 2015 at the Prague Forum on the Holocaust, where he spoke about the failure of intellectuals in a crisis situation such as the rise of Nazism. He claimed that the journalist published an article “Hitler is a gentleman” in the magazine Přítomnost. He later told a news conference that he had seen the text with his own eyes. However, the castle could not be found in the archives, according to historians.

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