IN a move backed by anti-corruption activists and the public, Pavel Blažek the Czech justice minister, appointed Lenka Bradáčová to head the Prague prosecutor’s office on July 30th. Some optimists see this as a sign that decades of clientelist politics are coming to end. Others worry their political pasts may yet come back to haunt them.

Ms Bradáčová vaulted to fame earlier this year when she launched the highest profile corruption inquiry in more than a decade against David Rath, a stalwart of high-level politics who was at the time the deputy chairman of the opposition Social Democrats. Her reputation of being uninfluenced by politics, while heading the prosecutor’s office in the northern city of Ústí nad Labem, led to calls for her appointment as head the Prague prosecutor’s office, which oversees most corruption investigations related to parliament. “All I can say is that this will be a difficult role and I will start tomorrow,” Ms Bradáčová said at the press conference announcing her appointment. “I do have an idea on what should be done.”

Ms Bradáčová's replaces Vlastimil Rampula who garnered a reputation for shelving corruption cases for political allies, so much so that he was nicknamed “The Sweeper” (Mr Rampula denies any sweeping of other wrongdoing.) The change will likely disrupt a status quo that has seen only one minister jailed for corruption since Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution despite near constant allegations of wrongdoing among MPs. The justice minister has alluded to the nervousness surrounding the fearless lawyer’s nomination. “Certain significant people do not wish for Bradáčová’s appointment,” Mr Blažek said earlier this month.

Mr Blažek himself is new. He has been in his job less than a month as successor of Jiří Pospíšil, whose sacking was tied to a political power struggle related to the appointment of the new Prague prosecutor. The clash over who will fill the powerful prosecutor post has continued unabated since then. As late as July 26th, Mr Blažek was seemingly doing whatever he could to avoid appointing Ms Bradáčová despite her having the backing of Pavel Zeman, the supreme state attorney, who is the country’s top prosecutor and is entitled by the Constitution with recommending his own subordinates.