If there is no coalition in Prague, Hřib will continue to rule. Can there be new elections?
Until the meeting Hřib
First of all, it is necessary that a council be established in Prague, just like in any other city, after the elections. The first post-election meeting of representatives is always convened by the previous mayor. According to the law, he should do so no later than 15 days after the deadline for contesting the election results in the courts. It was possible to challenge the election this year until October 7. A possible complaint about the invalidity of the election or the invalidity of the vote can mean that the constituent assembly is postponed and the verdict of the court is awaited. This happened in Prague this year and the court has not yet dealt with all the complaints, so we are still waiting for the date of the constituent assembly and we only know that it will be no later than 15 days after the last complaint has been dealt with.
In any case, before the representatives meet for the first time, the city is governed by the current mayor and his deputies. Even the entire Prague City Council remains in office. Paradoxically, a situation may arise where the constituent assembly will be headed by a mayor who has not been re-elected, and therefore is no longer a member of the assembly, because the mandate of the old representatives ends on election day.
According to the law, it is at the constitutive meeting of the new council that the new councilors are supposed to try to elect a new city manager. In practice, this means that following the promise of the representatives present, the composition of the body related to the election of the new mayor, his deputies and the entire council should be opened. But nowhere is it written that this point must be completed by the election of the entire council. Unlike, for example, the Chamber of Deputies, it can even theoretically happen that no one will be elected to the head of the city at the constituent meeting, i.e. neither the mayor, nor his deputies, nor any councilor. After all, we experienced this on Monday in Hradec Králové, where representatives met, but due to similar disagreements regarding the form of the coalition agreement, no one was elected at the constituent meeting.
Lord Mayor forever
The law also remembers this option and clearly states that in such a case the original mayor and the entire “old” council will remain at the head of the city. Therefore, in such a case, the pirate mayor Zdeněk Hřib and his current council would continue to rule Prague provisionally, but in fact with full powers.
At the same time, the Act on Municipalities does not say how long such a “provisional” can last at most. In theory, it is therefore conceivable that the old mayor would, in an extreme case, “take over” for months, years, or even perhaps the entire four-year term of office of the old council.
However, in the opinion of the Ministry of the Interior, neither the mayor nor his councilors, who are overserving in this way, can be dismissed, because their powers derive directly from the law, the authors of which probably wanted the cities not to be without official leadership even in these unusual situations. For the same reason, “over-serving” councilors cannot even give up their positions in the post-election “extension”. All of this should serve to create pressure on the new representatives to elect a new mayor as best as possible.
This is the only way to get rid of the rule of the old one. There are only two rather rigid ways to get around it. The first and simpler option is the election of at least one new deputy mayor. If the new council succeeds, the current mayor ends and the newly elected politician takes over his powers, even if he was only elected as a square. On the contrary, the old council will remain in office during this procedure until the entire new council is elected.
New elections? Complicated
The second way to unblock the post-election stalemate can be through new elections, but this option is very complicated at the municipal level. The council cannot dissolve itself. Representatives, or their majority, can force new elections in two ways.
The first is a situation where the number of representatives falls below half of the predetermined number. In Prague, the number of representatives would therefore have to fall below 33, as the council currently has 65 members. In practice, this could only be achieved if 33 representatives not only give up their positions, but also all their substitutes on the candidate lists for which they were elected, so that no one could take the vacant seats.
In such a case, the acting mayor must request the Ministry of the Interior to call new elections. For the layman, this is probably the case, but the council will continue to function with limited powers. At the same time, however, our “old friend” – mayor Zdeněk Hřib – would rule the city again until new elections were called in this way.
The second possibility to arrive at new elections would be a situation where a quorum council does not meet for six months, which can be achieved by the majority of councilors not intentionally going to its meetings. Then the council of the Ministry of the Interior offers and also opens the way to new elections. On both days, the Ministry of the Interior will announce up to thirty. Until then, the current council would remain at the head of the city.
In short, if the newly elected representatives of Prague want to replace Zdenek Hřiby as the head of the city, they must reach a majority agreement and choose his successor. Without it, change at the head of Prague will simply not happen.