He negotiated with ANO together in Prague. “We don’t talk about who will sit in what chair”
The Prague coalition together with the local cell of the ANO movement discussed the future of the capital city for the second time today in the building of the Chamber of Deputies. However, they did not agree on a coalition in the city council. Even after today’s meeting, its future form does not have much clearer outlines. The parties always deal only with the body of their election programs, not with the staffing of the city council.
“We are talking about how it should work in Prague, what should be done. We are not talking about who will sit on which chair, throne or which west he will walk,” Svoboda told Seznam Zprávy after today’s meeting.
Together, the ANO representative informed today that it is still a priority for him to create a coalition with the Pirates and the STAN movement. However, Svoboda also characterized the actions of the leader of the Pirates, Zdenek Hřiba, as haughty. Their next meeting should take place next Tuesday or Wednesday.
The pirates still insist that they will not sit in the city council with representative Jan Wolf (KDU-ČSL), who is accused in the case of manipulation of sports subsidies. The leader of the People’s Party, Marian Jurečka, said yesterday that there is a need to negotiate if Wolf will eventually sit on the city council. But the Prague coalition Spolu continues to stand behind him.
“Of course, we insist that the people we will nominate to the Prague City Council are chosen by our coalition and no one else,” said the chairman of the ODS club, Marek Benda. He called the fact that Jurečka would consider Wolf’s sacrifice a bad interpretation of his statement.
A vision of a city with opposition
Svoboda and ANO leader Patrik Nacher emphasized that their parties understand each other programmatically and that mutual negotiations are constructive. Both are also said to believe that they would be able to find an agreement even on so far disputed topics. One of them is free public transport, which is part of the ANO electoral program. “It’s not exactly something that should detract from a potential collaboration,” commented Nacher.
According to Svoboda, negotiations with ANO are important even if ANO ends up in the opposition.
“Forming a government over the city of course consists of coalition negotiations, but also positional negotiations. And that must start from the very beginning in order to define what is needed for the city,” said Svoboda. The possibility of an opposition agreement in which Spolu would govern with the tacit support of the ANO movement, but Svoboda ruled it out, saying that staffing was not discussed today.
After the meeting, both parties called on the current city not to make further major decisions that would affect the next Prague ruling coalition. The representatives of ANO cited as examples the contract for the new city philharmonic or the selection of new managers of the transport company.
The agreement between ANO and Spolu began to take shape today at the municipality in Brno. There, an extensive coalition of ODS, ANO, TOP 09, KDU-ČSL, Pirátů, Stan movement and ČSSD could be formed.
According to Nacher, however, a similar scenario for Prague is not yet on the table, and Svoboda sees it similarly. “The option that the existing coalition would work and we would join it, there really is no such option,” Svoboda said after the meeting.
“Brno is the second largest city and it was decided only now. Prague can easily make a decision in two or three weeks. There is no hurry in this matter, if the coalition is really to be solid,” said Nacher.