After about a month, the House resumed its activities
Prague – The Chamber of Deputies resumed its activities today. In the new post-election composition, the deputies returned to the Chamber after about a month. First, they made a promise made by the constitution so that they could fully assume their mandate. MEPs also decided that the House Mandate and Immunity Committee would have 16 members. Their meeting today for about an hour, then was interrupted. The most watched body of the constituent meeting, ie the election of the Speaker and also the Vice-Speakers of the Chamber, will not come next due to the procedural deadlines on Wednesday.
Today’s MEPs’ meetings, unlike the inaugural meetings four years ago, were not accompanied by any debate. At that time, the legislators had a dispute, especially about determining the number of members of the Credentials and Immunities Committee. In some variants, not all parliamentary groups were to be represented on the committee. Today, the plenary approved the number of committee members smoothly and without discussion. According to the chairman of the Civic Democrats, Zbyněk Stanjura, it was based on an agreement between clubs. The deputies discussed just as easily the establishment of the House Electoral Commission, which was traditionally established as the first body of the lower house last week.
The inaugural meeting began with the national anthem. Former Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Radek Vondráček (ANO) was the first to take the oath, and he also convened in accordance with the law. He will lead it until a new chairman is elected. According to the agreement, the lower chamber is to be headed by the parliamentary majority in the form of coalitions Together (ODS, KDU-ČSL, TOP 09) and Pirates, the chairwoman of TOP 09 Markéta Pekarová Adamová will become the mayor. The YES movement, which will end in opposition, announced the appointment of the incumbent Deputy Prime Minister Karel Havlíček as chairman.
Vondráček’s promise was followed by the chairman of the ODS and a coalition candidate for the new prime minister, Petr Fiala, as the oldest former deputy chairman of the Chamber of Deputies. Fiala then called from the oratory to take the oath in the hands of Vondráček, another deputy in alphabetical order, starting with Ivan Adamec (ODS) and finally Marek Ženíšek (TOP 09). They confirmed the promise by signing at a table, which is usually reserved for lawmakers. The plenary watched this approximately 40-minute standing ceremony.
Of the 200 deputies, Jiří Carbol, Pavla Golasowská and Marie Jílková (all KDU-ČSL), as well as Josef Flek (STAN), apologized for health reasons from the first day of the inaugural meeting, who did not state the reason. He will take the oath later, at the earliest when Wednesday the meeting continues. Four years ago, only Jiří Dolejš (KSČM), who took part in the congress of the Brazilian Communist Party, apologized from the then deputies.
Robert Plaga, Minister of Education (for ANO) and Miroslav Toman, Ministry of Agriculture (ČSSD), apologized to members of the outgoing government of Andrej Babiš (ANO) for work reasons. However, the government bench was only about half full, as the first members of the government present were left by the outgoing Deputy Prime Minister and the Ministry of the Interior, Jan Hamáček (ČSSD), whose party, like the KSČM, did not get into the Chamber this year.
The President of the Zlín Region, Radim Holiš (YES), also took the oath of office. He had previously announced that he would resign from the parliamentary mandate because he did not want to accumulate positions and wanted to work in the region. The mandate after Holiš will go to Margita Balaštíková, who was a member of the YES movement in the last two parliamentary terms.
The deputies have so far been arranged in alphabetical order in the Chamber, regardless of club affiliation. Old-new MP Tomio Okamura (SPD) and his older brother Hayato Okamura (KDU-ČSL) sat side by side, who were brought to the mandate from the 15th place by the Prague candidate of the Together coalition with preferential votes. The two brothers, who did not meet for the summer due to differences of opinion, also made a vow after each other.
The inaugural meeting will continue from Wednesday at 10:00. The debate could arise especially during the election of vice-presidents, when the representatives of the parliamentary majority criticize Vondráček as one of the two nominees of the YES movement. The SPD movement, on the other hand, does not like the fact that according to the coalition’s plans, it should not have any representative in the parliamentary leadership.
According to the plans of the parliamentary majority, there should be six vice-presidents of the lower house, one more than in the previous election period. Jan Skopeček (ODS), Věra Kovářová (STAN), Jan Bartošek (KDU-ČSL) and Olga Richterová (Pirates) and ANO nominee Jana Mračková Vildumetzová are expected to succeed in the first round of the secret ballot.
The ANO movement will nominate Deputy Prime Minister Havlíček as the head of the Chamber of Deputies
The ANO movement will nominate Karel Havlíček, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Transport, as the Speaker of the House. This was announced by Alena Schillerová, the head of the parliamentary club, at today’s press conference before the inaugural meeting of the Chamber of Deputies. Deputies of the emerging government of the Together Government (ODS, KDU-ČSL, TOP 09) and Pirates have previously announced to STAN that they will nominate Markéta Pekarová Adamová as the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies for the post of Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies.
“The reasons that led us to this are the following: we are the strongest opposition party. We believe that the opposition would control the government, that is the role of the Chamber of Deputies. so that we can perform this control function effectively, “Schiller said.
The movement demands three representatives in the leadership of the Chamber, in addition to the chairman, insists on the nominations of Radek Vondráček and Jana Mračková Vildumetzová as vice-chairmen. “We are entitled to them according to proportional representation,” added the head of the club and the outgoing Ministry of Finance.
The YES movement is not going to seek support from other clubs. Havlíček said that he would try to explain to the plenary of the House why he could be chairman of the lower house.
The President and Vice-Presidents of the lower house will be elected by the Plenum at the inaugural meeting, which began today. The Chamber of Deputies should have a seven-member presidency in the current parliamentary term, and a previous six-member presidency.
YES received an offer from coalitions to lead six committees, namely mandate and immune, constitutional-legal, military, school, electoral, which is in charge of the media, and administrative. Schiller reiterated today that this is not a good offer.
“We are not offered a committee where we could effectively apply any control activities to the government. We were particularly interested in the economic, but also in the budgetary, agricultural, health and other,” she noted. Helena Válková, a former Ministry of Justice, is a YES candidate to head the Mandate and Immunity Committee.
In the previous House, opposition deputies chaired a total of 11 committees – economic, school, mandate and immunity, budget, constitutional law, security, foreign, defense, European, committee on public administration and the environment. The school committee was originally headed by the then ODS deputy Václav Klaus, after his expulsion from the party, Karel Rais (YES) was entrusted with the management.
In the new composition of the lower house, ten committees should probably include members of government parties and eight representatives of opposition entities. According to the coalition agreement signed Together and the Pirates with STAN today, these parties should fall to the economic, budgetary, security, European, social, medical, foreign, agricultural and environmental committees.
The Organizing Committee will lead the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, for which the government parties have nominated the head of TOP 09, Markéta Pekarová Adamová. The incumbent Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Transport Karel Havlíček (ANO) will run against it.
The SPD insists on its representation in the leadership of the Chamber of Deputies
The SPD insists that it should have a representative in the leadership of the House. The chairman of the SPD, Tomio Okamura, told reporters before today’s opening of the inaugural meeting of the Chamber of Deputies. According to the plans of the coalitions Spolu (ODS, KDU-ČSL, TOP 09) and Pirates with STAN, which have a majority in the lower chamber, the SPD will not be represented at the head of the chamber. The election of a new Speaker and Vice-Speakers of the House will be on the agenda on Wednesday. Okamura also criticized some of the bodies of the emerging government’s program statement.
“It is unacceptable for us for the Pirates to be represented in the leadership with four deputies, but on the contrary, the SPD with 20 deputies did not have this representation,” Okamura said. He accused the so-called five-party coalition of undemocratic conduct.
According to the chairman of the SPD deputies, Radim Fiala, the parliamentary group of the movement will meet before the meeting of the Chamber of Deputies from the elections and advise on how to continue the dispute over the parliamentary leadership. “No one from the five-party coalition called us because of the committees,” he added. Due to this, the movement is not clear about the nominations. Acting Together and the Pirates, STAN called himself arrogant.