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The revelations revealed on April 17 that Russia was behind the 2014 explosions at Czechias Vrbetice munitions depot continue to spread chaos. The Seznam portal dropped its own bombshell on Monday with a report that the deputy prime minister and interior minister, Jan Hamacek, had previously planned to use an April 19 trip to Moscow to offer to bury Pragues findings in return for 1 million doses of Sputnik V vaccine and a promise to hold a Russia-US summit between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden in the Czech capital.

The article describes secret meetings in Hamaceks office and claims that several of the military, police and security officials present have confirmed that Hamacek discussed the plan. The interior minister has rubbished the report, claiming that the cancelled trip to Moscow was planned as a decoy ahead of the revelations.

Hamaceks Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) junior partner in the ANO-led coalition decided the best defence is a good offence and promptly distributed a credibility barometer, noting five claims of inaccuracies from journalist Janek Kroupas work over the past two decades. Many on social media said it was a technique reminiscent of those employed by the former communist regime.

Prime Minster Andrej Babis said he believed Hamaceks version of events. Of course, if true, the scandal would not reflect well on his management of the government.

The opposition demanded Hamaceks head, but a special meeting in parliament on Tuesday produced little more than mudslinging. Hamacek now plans to sue Seznam. Its suggested a legal hearing would mean that the officials that attended the meeting, but who have refused to comment in public on what was discussed, will now be required to speak up. One thing everyone agrees on is that the disagreement and disarray consuming Czech politics since the revelations are a gift to Moscow.

Hamacek also demanded apologies from the opposition for suggesting he acted with anything but the best interests of the Czech Republic at heart. My own reputation and my partys good name have been damaged, so I have no option but to sue the authors of the article for slander and scaremongering, and I expect an apology from those of my colleagues who labelled me a traitor, he harrumphed.

The deputy prime minister needs to show hes putting up a good fight. He recently retained the leadership of the CSSD with a pledge to stem the partys haemorrhaging support by targeting the more conservative left-of-centre voters. That cohort is loyal to Milos Zeman, the Russia-linked president who has pressed the Czech authorities to start using the Sputnik V vaccine. He also sought to cast doubt on the revelations surrounding Vrbetice.

There have been suggestions that the reported offer of a tradeoff to Moscow sounds a lot like the sort of plan Zeman might dream up. Therefore, Hamacek could now do with distancing himself a little from the head of state.

But can he do it quickly enough? CSSD is at serious risk of failing to pass the 5 per cent threshold to enter parliament at the next election, and a vote could come sooner than thought, with new election laws that would allow the vote to go ahead set to pass on May 5.

The new legislation was ordered by the Constitutional Court and introduces a new method of converting votes into parliamentary seats that is a little less favourable to larger parties. According tomodels, had the new system been used in the 2017 election, the ruling ANO party would hold 69 seats instead of 78, with most other parties benefitting from one or two extra mandates.

The passage of the new laws raises the likelihood of early elections. The Communist Party (KSCM), which previously supported the minority government, said last month it would agree to a no-confidence vote if called. However, the centrist opposition has been wary that without new election laws in place, power would pass to the president. With that risk now reduced, the opposition could make a move to force a vote before the scheduled election in October.

Certainly, it could be a good time to strike for the opposition. Data released this week from aEurobarometer surveytaken in February suggests that Czechs now have the EUs lowest level of trust in their government at just 19 per cent. On the other hand, no more than 15 per cent trust parliament and only one in ten has any belief in the countrys political parties. The data reveals the depths to which Czech cynicism has descended. The EU average for trust in government sits at 36 per cent; average trust in parliament is one percentage point lower.

Buffered by Pragues poor performance in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Czech reading of trust in the government dropped by more than half compared with the last Eurobarometer reading taken in summer 2020. Satisfaction with the countrys coronavirus measures fell in the same period from 71 per cent to just 24 per cent.

Yet it seems the novel coronavirus is also proving something of a vaccine against Euroscepticism. The survey shows that Czech trust in the EU grew by 9 percentage points to 48 per cent, the highest reading for eight years. Hence, the Czech Republic has lost its long-held Eurosceptic crown to Greece, where just 37 per cent of the population trusts Brussels. Italy, Austria, France and Cyprus are also less impressed than the Czechs.

A slim majority of Czechs remain wary, but the pandemic does appear to have convinced many that such small countries have many benefits to gain from a multilateral world. Czech trust in the UN grew 12 percentage points to 57 per cent, and respondents also expect the EU to provide access to vaccines and establish a common European strategy to deal with similar crises in the future.

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Democracy Digest: A Week of Illiberal Rants, Threats to Sue And Hands Across the Aisle - Balkan Insight