Together and the Pirates have almost agreed on a coalition in Prague. But the human Wolf is an obstacle
Despite the third meeting of the Together with the Pirates coalition on the presentation of the coalition at the Prague municipality, the parties did not agree even less than two weeks after the municipal elections. Although they agree on how the capital should lead, they cannot agree on the appointment of the council. The pirates insist that the indicted folklorist Jan Wolf is not supposed to sit in it. However, the Spolu coalition refuses to accede to this request.
Whether the populist Wolf will be in charge of the capital remains the only major obstacle to the creation of a coalition of Pirates and the Together group, which consists of ODS, TOP 09 and KDU-ČSL. They have a similar view on fundamental topics such as transport or the construction of apartments, except for minor disagreements, which they say can be resolved.
But the pirates still insist on the condition that no one who is under criminal prosecution should sit on the council. This principle is also enshrined in the post-election strategy, which was approved by party members.
“The Together coalition expressed the most striking condition, that the criminally prosecuted Jan Wolf must necessarily sit in the council. We have not been presented with this before,” described the course of the negotiations, the serving pirate mayor Zdeněk Hřib.
The pirates do not want to back down from their demand also due to the fact that the party’s membership base would agree to a possible coalition agreement. And management assumes she would reject it if Wolf were to sit on the board.
In turn, Pospíšil from TOP declared that Jiří předseda09 will speak at the Prague party’s meeting on Sunday and that he will speak at the pirates’ request. “We as Spolu will occupy a certain number of seats in the council and it is our sacred right and our political responsibility to select our best candidates. Or should these candidates be in quotation marks for selecting the Pirates’ referendum? I think we have this right,” said Pospíšil.
Leader Spolu and their candidate for mayor Bohuslav Svoboda claim that the coalition tried to negotiate at least that the Pirates would let their members vote on whether they would insist on their demand. But they did not meet with success.
The number two of the Pirates, Jana Komrsková, announced that they will not change the post-election strategy. “The idea that we would appear in front of our members of the regional forum and change something that was approved in May of this year seems completely inaccessible to us,” she said.
Therefore, the Pirates proposed that Wolf hold the position of chairman of the municipal commission instead of the position of councilor. They wouldn’t have a problem with that, because unlike a council member, he wouldn’t have decision-making powers in this post. But I don’t want the representative of the winning coalition to do that either.
Wolf will only back down if Spolu urges him to do so
Despite this contradiction, both sides still claim that it is in their greatest interest to form a coalition at the government level, i.e. together with the STAN movement. Without him, he would not have a majority in the council. “There is readiness for negotiations on our part. We must now inform our representative clubs and we will go into the next rounds of negotiations with the mandate we receive from them,” summed up the result of the citizen democrat Zdeněk Zajíček. On Monday, the parties will call each other and agree on how the negotiations will continue.
Wolf himself, who is a defendant in the case of allocation of sports subsidies at the municipality, does not intend to back down. They would give up their participation in the council only if the Spolu coalition called on them to do so. But she stands behind him. Svoboda justifies this, among other things, by the fact that the criticized People’s Party received 92,000 votes in the elections, while Mayor Hřib received only less than 75,000.
Wolf defends himself by saying that he did not commit any intentional crime. “If I dodged the Pirates now, it would mean that anyone can be suspended for anything. I’m here for thousands of other politicians to whom something similar can happen,” reasoned the long-time representative and councilor.
In the meantime, the Spolu coalition also negotiated with the group Praha sebe and also with the ANO movement, which is in opposition in the lower house. The coalition Together with the ANO movement could rule in Prague, together they have a narrow majority of 33 votes in the 65-member council.
After Monday’s meeting, both Svoboda and ANO Prague leader Patrik Nacher praised the smooth progress and breakthrough in program priorities. They are due to meet again next week, although Spulu favors a coalition with the Pirates and STAN.