Lukáš Blažej
Prize for Courage 2018 CZK 30 492
The 22-year-old law student from Ústí nad Labem did not miss a single city council meeting in four years. But in 2015 he stuck a thorn in the flesh of certain politicos and bureaucrats, when several ANO city fathers sacked their own mayor and the whole city management. The local ANO cell was disbanded post haste. Blažej noticed that shortly before that episode, department chiefs had shared among themselves 451,000 crowns’ worth of bonuses. Some got up to 45,000 CZK each, others wound up penniless. Suspecting it might be a bonus for party loyalty, he requested information on who got what. The city council declined to provide any information; Lukáš Blažej appealed against the verdict, the appeals court annulled the verdict, Lukáš Blažej again appealed, the appeals court again dismissed his motion… et cetera, ad nausea, seventeenth times to this date. Blažej eventually filed a lawsuit but no ruling has been made thus far.
He was a little more successful with his request for the itemized budget of a suspicious project, subsidized by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MŠMT). Not that they would provide information on the voluntary basis, but they at least offered an explanation: they said the request for information was a spam. The case wound up at the Supreme Administrative Court, whose Verdict Ref No. 9 As 223/2015-35 of 15 Dec 2015 stated that the application should have been processed. Finally the MŠMT had to apologize for a 631-day default on processing a request.
Lukáš Blažej also takes credit for a verdict that prevents the Ústí nad Labem city council from barring citizens from speaking at its meetings. In addition, his nomination was instrumental to “awarding” Ústí nad Labem with the Closed status for its decisions and barring civic groups from participation in administrative proceedings. Supported by the Anticorruption Endowment (NFPK), Lukáš Blažej fights for the voidance of a building permit for the villas of the politicos who privatized land around the Habrovice Fishpond, changed a an area-planning edict and started building regardless of the incidence of specially protected animal species and protests by the members of the public.
Some politicos and bureaucrats do not take lightly Blažej’s involvement. Councillor Lukáš Konečný, a boxing coach, wrote on Facebook: “Could you please fetch me this Blažej, something’s wrong in his upper department and I could fix it.” His remark gained publicity and there was no physical showdown, anyway.
Bureaucrats opted for a different strategy: Ústí nad Labem has sued Blažej on four occasions to date—for slander, false accusation, blackmail, unauthorized handling of personal data, and assuming official powers. But all charges were shelved and a police commissar fumed in a resolution: “This submission does not contain any facts whatsoever that indicate a criminal offence has been committed and one must wonder why actually it was presented. It cannot be overlooked that the [submission] targets a person, who is a politically involved citizen, often critical of the management of a statutory city. Criminal proceedings must never serve in solving personal or ideological conflicts and must not be abused for such purposes.”
In 2018 Lukáš became the youngest Ústí nad Labem city father and he is determined to carry on with his activities. Active in the field of public administration, the young student placed first in the 8th annual Czech-Slovak round of an academic contest with his treatise, “How the precinct election commission setup impacts ascertained election results”, where he discovers the roots of mistakes that lead to false reports on election outcomes. A dedicated environmentalist, he is the cofounder of the Ústí Screws ecological association. At present, Lukáš Blažej is gaining a broadly-based experience as an intern at the Environmental Committee of the European Parliament.
