Fight for the Senate: Chetník Töpfer on TV? Unfair advertising, criticizes the opponent
He turned to Deník only during the election week. He said that he was preparing a complaint to the Council of Czech Television and also to the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting. He is also considering a court complaint. “I consider it completely incorrect in a political competition that Tomáš Töpfer is running here in South Moravia, even though he is from Prague. In addition, the fact that the Czech Television advertises him just before the elections is against the rules of the Czech Television,” says the mountaineer and traveler.
The fight for the senate in Brno: gendarmerie Arazím from Humoresek or the “transferring” director
Tomáš Töpfer uses a positive “image of Arazím” on the election website, rally posters and Facebook. His meetings with the voters are called Chetník zes zech scenie četník. Around the candidate appear people in historical gendarmerie uniforms. I don’t agree with the criticism. “The popular Chetnické humoreska series is included in the broadcasts of Czech Television with regularity. In addition, this year the first episode was already broadcast in January, that is, at a time when I was not even considering a senatorial campaign. From then on, it follows logically. I take criticism with a smile. It’s as if doctors were not supposed to practice during the election campaign, officials were not supposed to be in office, or bus drivers stopped public transport,” responded the seventy-one-year-old Töpfer, director of Prague’s Vinohrady Theater, among other things.
Candidates for the Senate for district 55, Brno-město:
Kotas Tomáš, SPD, architect, Brno
Pavlíček Radomír, STAN, mayor, chairman of the regional development committee of JMK, Železné
Red Fajmonová Petra, PRO 2022, nurse, Brno
Semrád Bořek, ANO, doctor, director of the hospital, Lelekovice
Smutný Bohumil, KSČM, manager of the Ivančicko microregion, Ivančice
Töpfer Tomáš, KDU-ČSL+ODS+TOP 09 (Together), actor, director, theater teacher, Prague
Trčala Pavel, Moravians+MZH, ski tour organizer, traveler, climber, Brno
Even the Czech Television defends itself against the name-calling. “We already included the series in the program plan last fall,” stated spokeswoman Karolína Blinková. The sending of Töpfer to the Senate elections for Spolu was officially announced by the Citizen Democrats only in June.
According to the Czech Television program, it does not present the mentioned person as a candidate or a politician, nor his opinions, and it was not necessary to exclude him from the broadcast. “At the time of pre-election broadcasts, Czech Television follows all standards and applicable regulations as well as the owners of Regular pre-election and election broadcasts published on our website in August. And I do so in this case as well,” spokeswoman Blinková emphasized.
The Brno campaign in videos: the drowning Hladík and the ambiguous first time, take a look
Election campaign expert Karel Komínek would not blame Czech Television or Töpfer. “If the program is planned in this way for the long term, I don’t see it as a mistake. Such a situation does not occur often. In addition, it is a personality already well known to the public in the given role, especially among his electoral target group of middle-aged and older people. If he would make himself visible in a completely new way, currently and as planned, it would be possible to look at it differently,” commented the founder of the Institute of Political Marketing. According to him, it would be extremely technically demanding to examine, in principle, which of the actors or well-known faces in programs pulled from the television archive are not candidates, for example in municipal elections.
The 44-year-old Brno athlete and traveler Trčala was careful that his regularly prepared travel program for Czech Radio Brno could not be broadcast during the pre-election period. According to him, Czech Radio has similar rules regarding candidates as Czech Television. “For example, we have also suspended the wine series in which two of the winemakers are candidates in the municipal elections,” confirmed Jiří Kokmotos, head of Czech Radio Brno’s program.