Czech politicians battle it out with odd billboards

Billboard campaign against CSSD continues

PRAGUE- Another campaign ridiculing the senior ruling Social Democrats (CSSD) can be seen on billboards around the most frequent Czech road, the D1 motorway from Prague to Brno and further, the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes.

One motive shows Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek (CSSD) as a bride and Miroslav Grebenicek, until recently the head of the Communist (KSCM), as the groom.

Another billboard shows a former monumental memorial of Soviet dictator Stalin whose head is replaced by Paroubek's and where among the soldiers are Grebenicek, former Czech Communist president and Stalin's friend Klement Gottwald, and a Martian.

The billboards warn against Social Democrats' plans to cooperate with the Communists. The Martian is linked to Paroubek's statement that he will push his bills through with the support of anybody available, even Martians.

This is already the third series of an anti-CSSD campaign.

Unlike before, the senior opposition Civic Democrats have not officially admitted that they are its authors or those who ordered it.

"We won't comment on it at all," ODS spokesman Jiri Sezemsky told the paper. [..]

According to agency's price lists, a similar campaign may cost over 100,000 crowns. [..]

However, the Civic Democrats have not only ordered such campaigns, but they have also been ridiculed themselves as several weeks posters with the ODS deputy heads Ivan Langer and Miroslava Nemcova, stating "CzechTek in every village," appeared.

The last CzechTek techno music festival, which the police suppressed this summer, became a major issue of dispute between the government and the opposition, with Paroubek defending the police action and the ODS criticising it.

($1=24.692 crowns)