Czech doctors invade Slovakia

The ongoing wage dispute between Slovakian doctors and the government prompted Slovakian Prime Minister Iveta Radičová on Sunday to ask her Czech counterpart Petr Nečas for help. Nečas responded by stationing roughly 30 army doctors in Slovakia. This cooperation is anti-constitutional, writes the conservative daily Lidové noviny: "The comparison by the head of the Slovakian doctors' union with the invasion by the Warsaw Pact forces in 1968 is of course exaggerated. Nevertheless the ease with which the two heads of government have breached their own constitutions is surprising. Iveta Radičová by declaring a 'state of emergency' and Petr Nečas with his 'military deployment'. ... If the Hungarian government under Viktor Orbán had had a similarly idiotic idea people in Slovakia would not be so quick to shrug it off with a smile. If Czech army doctors are deployed on a foreign mission to Hungary in a few weeks - the doctors there want to strike as well - it could be compared there with 1956. Back then people didn't exactly welcome the occupiers with open arms."

» more information (external link, Czech)
More from the press review on the subject » Health Policy, » EU neighbourhood policy, » Trade unions, » Czech Republic, » Slovakia
All available articles from » Luboš Palata

» To the complete press review of Wednesday, December 7, 2011