I’ve been in the Czech Republic just for a week and what turmoil! The Czech Prime Minister and the whole government resigned over a scandal. I rarely write about politics, but this time I can’t resist, since the whole case involves 2 topics unusual for a political arena: Happiness and Love.

“I wish you a bit of happiness” said our President to the leaving Prime Minister. What a quote. It touched my heart somehow. We rarely hear politicians talk about happiness. Yet, we all long for happiness and recognize it as the most universal goal of our life.

The whole scandal has several different dimensions, but at the heart of it is an alleged love affair between the Prime Minister and his Chief of Staff, Ms. Nagyova who decided to spy on the PM’s wife. On top of that, she illegally involved the secret service to do this task. If I recall well, this is the first “love affair” scandal in the Czech politics since our Velvet Revolution in 1989. Yet, it is so human. We all long to love and be loved and this longing is so powerful that it sometimes makes us do things difficult to understand, like illegally using the secret service to spy on our lover’s wife.

The whole situation creates a lot of drama in the whole country. I stay away from this drama as much as possible, trusting that it is all happening for a reason and that our country will move forward and recover from whatever damage this scandal caused. I am more interested in the individual story of the main actors, trying to tune into how they might feel now and if possibly the scandal can indeed bring them more happiness and love. In the end, we are all of the same essence, no matter what our role, function or title.

It’s hard to predict how the whole scandal will conclude and what will happen with the main protagonists. Ms Nagyova is in jail while all the evidence is being collected, no one would envy her right now. But as a woman, I feel a certain compassion for her. She just wants to be happy, love and be loved. As all of us do. We may judge her, criticize her or we may try to put ourselves into her shoes to understand her motives (in case the allegations will be confirmed). In the end, she wouldn’t be the first person in the human history to make a mistake because of love motives. And definitely not the last one.