Let’s cancel the municipal elections. Well, at least in Prague 1 and Brno
photo: Markéta Šálková, PrahaIn.cz/Vítězslav Dobeš
COMMENT: The opposition pact of 1998 has set the bar very high for all other immoral coalitions, but it still sometimes fails. After Brno with its “national front”, Prague 1 has now also become visible.
Although there is a risk that a native of Prague, who has the audacity to write about conditions in Brno, will at least burn his keyboard, let’s briefly recall what kind of coalition they have put together in the Moravian metropolis.
Together, representatives of ODS, TOP 09, ANO, KDU-ČSL, STAN and ČSSD put it together in the council and especially in the city council. Originally, the Pirates were also supposed to be in the intended coalition, but they backed out after the police intervened in Brno due to alleged machinations with municipal real estate.
How did the people of Brno justify their very wide-ranging coalition? Of course not! The magic term under which any mischief is mercifully hidden is “program intrusions”.
Pirates or gold diggers?
In Prague 1, the programmatic overlaps are apparently even greater, as similar broad coalitions and the Pirates also jumped in there. Although this provoked a nationwide negotiation process in the buccaneer party, it was clear that the clear result – disapproval of the Pirates’ participation in the agreed coalition – was par excellence. The local section of the Pirates and their leader decided to ostentatiously throw the result of the party proceedings into the trash. Borečci founded an association called Pirates and Citizens of Prague 1, which was to be expected. If you choose the Pirates as an accelerator on the way to pleasures, while even investing a quarter of a million crowns in this way, you will hardly obey the “order” to leave the coalition, which was constructed long before the elections.
And how did the pirate rebels pay it back in Prague 1? Exactly according to the long-agreed pre-election coalition, they teamed up with ODS, TOP 09, ANO and Residents 1. In the form of the last-named – after a four-year absence of visible influence – some reminiscences of the local ČSSD’s horrible branch materialized.
In order to better motivate local representatives to the coalition ceiling, sixteen coalition representatives out of twenty-seven have paid prebends. Program overlaps are so great in Prague 1 that it needs to be supported with above-standard financial flows from the municipal coffers.
Every night like a drunken orgy
At first glance, the attentive reader can see the difference between the Pirates in Brno and Prague 1. While the Brno buccaneers respect some moral principles, a significant part of their colleagues from the central part of Prague are mainly interested in money. After all, in the context of the entire capital, Prague 1 is known for the fact that little works in it the way it does in the centers of other European metropolises. People who live in Dlouhá Street, for example, and whose home reminds them of the suburbs of Vladivostok every night because of the frenzy of foreign tourists, could tell a story.
Actually, we could cancel municipal elections in both Prague 1 and Brno. The squires, who are more or less evenly distributed on the individual sides, always agree with each other, election or not.