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It's no yolk: egg-faced politician plots revenge
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-04 16:24

PRAGUE – Czech opposition leader Jiri Paroubek, pelted with scores of eggs at a pre-election meeting last week, threatened on Wednesday to hurl eggs at any journalists writing about the incident.

It's no yolk: egg-faced politician plots revenge
Czech opposition leader Jiri Paroubek, seen here being pelted with eggs at a pre-election meeting last week, has threatened to hurl eggs at any journalists who write about the incident. [Agencies] 
"After the elections, I will take a basket of eggs and come to your newsroom and throw them at you," Paroubek said in an interview with the DNES daily.

"I don't like the way you write ... I will pelt you and you will see how funny it is," said the leader of the left-wing Social Democrats.

The egg attacks on the Social Democrats and Paroubek in particular have become one of the main talking points of the campaign in the lead-up to the June 5-6 elections to the European Parliament.

It started two weeks ago when a young man threw an egg at Paroubek and missed.

Last week, Paroubek -- dubbed Paroubegg by his opponents -- asked for police assistance as the attacks became more frequent, but this did not help when a crowd in Prague pelted him and his entourage with hundreds of eggs.

Meanwhile, some Social Democrats started to offer scrambled eggs to voters at meetings as an expression of goodwill.

On Monday, two solitary egg-throwers were arrested in Brno (south) after a fight with the police and they may end up in prison.

"An egg thrown at a politician has always been a symbol. But this is no longer a symbolic expression of disagreement. This is political violence, though in a moderate form," Tomas Lebeda, a political scientist at Palacky University in the eastern city of Olomouc said on Wednesday.

Former Czech president Vaclav Havel said on Tuesday that the egg-pelting was "no longer a mere casual practical joke" and that the Czech political scene had become ruder. His successor Vaclav Klaus has also condemned the attackers.