Ing. Jan Socha

"I got speaking to the then CEO Hanák. I was opposed to product delimitation. Why do we have to make a steering wheel for the Tatra Mountains in Horní Počernice and drive there every day? Couldn't we do it right here? Here I have a technological procedure that is three times cheaper and we save money on transport. And the director looks at me, standing in the ninth floor of the then headquarters building, and says, 'But Socha, what would the workers in those Horní Počernice do?' And I replied: ´Mr. Director, tell that kind of stupidity to the striking Tatra workers in a year once they are striking under your windows that they have no job. 'Unfortunately, he did not mark my words and it all happened. At that time, there were 15000 people in the Tatras. Production was delimited to Slovakia and elsewhere, and after the privatization, the Tatra workers had nothing to produce and many more were on strike. So, I regretted that out of fifteen thousand, there were a thousand people left in the end."

"I said I was in New Zealand for three months. For a month I went to an English school, the second month I rented a car and toured the two beautiful New Zealand islands, and last month I worked on an apple and peach plantation. But there is something that we have not experienced for generations here. There are natural authorities. When I was sitting at my landlord's watching TV and there was a stupid game Become a Millionaire, they ended up and there was news. And the host said to me, 'Shut up! Shut up. My country's Prime Minister, Helen Clark, is speaking now. Be quiet. ‘And I told him that when the highest representative of my country, my classmate Mirek Topolánek, the prime minister, speaks, I usually turn off the television. These are the differences that in a democratic society the president is respected as well as the prime minister, the doctor, the teacher, the director, the policeman, and the pastor. And it wasn't here until 1989, and unfortunately it isn't today."