HAND-PICKED ONE-PARTY CANDIDATES

Grey River Argus, 31 May 1948, Page 5

HAND-PICKED ONE-PARTY CANDIDATES

Communist Methods in Czechoslovakia (Rec 8.40 p.m.) LONDON, May 30. Voters will go to the polls tomorrow (Tuesday) in Czechoslovakia’s election. “They will go to vote for a handpicked list of deputies, who cannot lose, says the Associated Press correspondent in Prague. ••Most voters are expected to cast single ticket ballots, ensuring about 225 seats for the Communist Party, out of a total of 300 in the Parliament, in which they will have the support of about 26 Social Democratic Party ’candidates who are on this list. Non-voters may be fined from 2s to £lOO sterling, and casting a blank ballot is being officially regarded as a betrayal of the Republio. The . Government authorities have now withdrawn a promise to foreign press correspondents that they would be permitted to enter lection premises to study the method of voting. The authorities offered the press correspondents, instead, to be conducted on a tour, which would be confined to the Prague district, “'because of petrol restrictions.” One Party Only to Vote for LONDON, May 29. The 8,000.000 Czechoslovakian voters who will go to the polls on Sunday have only two alternatives, to vote for a single list of Government candidates or to register their disapproval by not voting. The Prague correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” states that this reduces the election to merely going through the motions of voting, and that it would be misleading to describe this “observance of ritual by a defunct democracy” as an tion.The correspondent states that the Government has taken extraordinary precautions in advance of the election to ensure that as many voters as possible cast their votes, and it has let it be widely known that those who refuse to vote or who discard their voting papers run the risk of paying for their temerity. The Government has means of checking those who do not vote, because those who refuse to vote for Governmnt candidates are expected to descard their voting papers in front of the returning officers. So far, the only overt opposition to the Government’s method of conducting the election has come from the Roman Catholic Church. The new Parliament will sit for six years. More Czech Officials Resign in London LONDON, Mav 29. Four members of the Czech Embassy in London have resigned theii posts as a protest against the procedure to bo adopted for the Czech election. NO OPPOSITION! Doctor E. Goldseucker, the Counsellor of the Embassy, told the press that there are no Opposition Partie in the election, because in spite of the Government’s invitation, no Opposition Party has put forward a candidate. Secrecv of the vote was absolutely assured. The Czech Assembly has announced that General J. Plass, the Czech military attache in Britain and Deputy Lieut.-Colonel Z. Hrncir have resigned. An Embassy spokesman said that Colonel Hrncir was recalled to Prague some time ago, and he was supposed to return there on Wednesday. Neither, he said, had yet explained the resignations. Thirty-six Czech Ms.P. Now in Exile Oppose Communist Dictatorship LONDON, May 29. The 23 Czech members of Parliament, who escaped from Czechoslovakia, met in C'axton Hall, Westmin--ster, to-day. M. Blaza Vilim, secre-tary-general iof the Czech Social Democrat Party, presided. He said that all the 36 Czech deputies in exile had been invited to attend, and members were coming from Western Europe. He said the late Jan Masaryk was found dead on the morning of the day he planned to leave Czechoslovakia by plane to lead the struggle for the “restitution of freedom and democracy in Czechoslovakia.” The delegates stood to attention below a black-draped photograph of the late Jan Masaryk. They adopted a resolution condemning the new Czechoslovak constitution and asserting that they will continue ns political representatives of Czechoslovak democracy, which to-day was forcibly silenced.