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Czech president admits humiliation over ‘pen stealing’ incident

  11:44

Regrets? He’s had a few... the Czech head of state says he felt like kicking himself over the infamous Chilean pen ‘stealing’ incident

‘Commander in Thief’? Czech President Václav Klaus, moments before pocketing the now famous pen in Chile foto: © YouTube, CNNČeská pozice

Czech President Václav Klaus has admitted his deep embarrassment at his “pen stealing” incident during a diplomatic trip to Chile last year that was captured on television and went viral worldwide over the Internet.

“The scandal of the Chilean pen did not give me much pleasure. I could have kicked myself,” the Czech head of state said in an interview on commercial channel TV Nova late Thursday.

But Klaus said the incident had been unfairly jumped upon with joy by his opponents. “It was a completely cheap opportunity to attack me,” he added of the now infamous incident and personal low point during his tour of Latin American states in April 2011.

Images of Klaus first admiring the pen used during a signing ceremony — sheepishly pocketing while smiling and nodding as Chilean President Sebastián Pinera continued his diplomatic discourse and then putting on his best poker face for such solemn occasions — were first screened on Czech public television but soon went viral worldwide  over the Internet and Facebook.

‘The scandal of the Chilean pen did not give me much pleasure. I could have kicked myself.’

It was a very, very public humiliation for the former Czech prime minister and creator of the center-right Civic Democrat (ODS) party, who likes to be taken seriously on the world stage, for example as an economic expert and denier of mainstream climate change thinking. In his homeland, for friends and foes alike, it was a symbolic bursting of a very big ego.

It also spawned tongue in cheek domestic campaigns, such as an appeal for pens to be sent to a president so clearly lacking in writing materials, or Klaus being dubbed “the Commander in Thief,” a reference to his position as head of the armed services.

Klaus’ immediate defense of his actions was not too convincing. He at first maintained that the pen was nothing special and just a run-of-the-mill item, though it later turned out to have been specially made for the occasion by a craftsman using semi-precious stones.

He later fell back on the line that it was usual for heads of state to take the pens used for official signing ceremonies as a sort of souvenir of the occasion, though Czech media screened instances of other visiting world leaders who clearly asked for permission to pocket pens after the diplomatic niceties were concluded.

That following normal practice line was trotted out again by Klaus in Wednesday’s interview. The Czech head of state also defended himself over his recent controversial use of presidential pardons and the suggestions that he used his powers to quash the sentence on a former head of a university convicted of bribery, embezzlement and fraud because she was close to his wife and moves to pardon a criminal in a Kč100 million fuel fraud scam.

“These pardons really create problems and open me up to attacks. It is really difficult and unthankful work,” Klaus said, adding that he maintained that the presidential pardon should be maintained in the face of calls from some politicians to cancel it.

Error-prone president

The TV Nova interview took place on the ninth anniversary of Klaus’ presidency and the start of his last year in the post before direct elections are held for the first time to choose his successor early in 2013. While the painful “pen stealing” incident tops Klaus’ humiliations over the last 12 months, it has been a far from an isolated event in what has appeared as an increasingly error-prone presidency.

‘These pardons really create problems and open me up to attacks. It is really difficult and unthankful work.’

The Czech head of state was involved in a row during a private trip to Australia in July last year when he refused to go through a metal detector at the parliament building. He made comments about ouzo drinkers sitting in the shade of cypress trees that provoked the Greek prime minister two months later and, in domestic politics, has come out with fulsome praise for the Public Affairs (VV) education minister, Josef Dobeš, who is widely regarding as a disaster for the sector and source of continuous scandals over his ministry management.

This week Klaus opened himself up to more foreign ridicule, this time in powerful neighbor Germany. He threatened to return a prize from the famous center-right political foundation, Konrad Adenauer Stifting, in protest at  suspicions it was barring a right-wing Czech politicians and former head of Klaus’ think tank from a public conference.

The prestigious daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung pointed out later that Klaus had never received the foundation’s top international prize but only a much lesser award which the heads of local offices were allowed to hand out at their discretion. The Czech president appeared to be threatening to return a prize that he had never received, the paper commented.

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