Okamura's Days are Numbered as Deputy Speaker

According to Rychetski, it was a mistake to appoint SPO Chairman Tomio Okamura Deputy Speaker of the House.

The President of the Constitutional Court, Pavel Rychetský, said on Vaclav Moravec’s Questions that it was a mistake to appoint SPD Chairman Tomio Okamura as Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. His dismissal will require a vote by the deputies at the next lower house parliamentary meeting, which will start on February 27th.

Justice Minister Robert Pelikan, however, worries that Okamura’s statements about the Lety camp are not just a pretext for enforcing the departure of an inconvenient policy. 

When the SPD chief said in January that the Lety camp was not fenced and was free of movement, the public was outraged. The criticism was expressed by the Prague Jewish Community and the Museum of Romany Culture, which saw his comments as holocaust denial. Okamura later apologized for commenting that the camp was not fenced, but said that no guards where posted so the people could move about freely.

“Not only these comments, but all the comments on the various social networks that Tomio Okamura and other representatives of his party have made in recent years, raise at least an alarming signal in all civilized Europe about what is happening in the Czech Republic,” he said in Sunday’s Questions Václav Moravce Chairman of the Constitutional Court Pavel Rychetský.