Post-election negotiations in Prague: Pražské Spolu and ANO have so far agreed on the terms of support for the minority council
“We are coming up with tolerant minority councils by the end of February (2023), so that it fulfills two basic objectives. And that, three months after the elections, the politicians who emerged from these elections are already ruling,” said deputy and chairman of Prague’s ANO deputies Patrik Nacher. According to him, the second goal is to create time space for negotiations on a coalition, because the fact that he constantly interrupts the constituent assembly for three weeks does not lead to any results of the negotiations.
15 points
The negotiators presented YES 15 program points that, according to them, the minority council would have to deal with. Among them are, for example, the matching of energy costs for schools, the capacity of secondary schools, the completion of audits of some city companies or a change in the rules for allocating city apartments.
“We looked at it (points) briefly, but we don’t see any problem there. We promised to give an answer to that by Tuesday. We assume that we will be able to say that these are problems that we would solve anyway,” said deputy, former mayor and representative Bohuslav Svoboda (ODS). There is a great deal of agreement on some points, for example in school capacities, rules for allocating apartments or audits.
If the parties agree on Tuesday, a new minority council could be elected at Thursday’s meeting of representatives. The chairman of Spolu representatives Zdeněk Zajíček (ODS) said that Spolu would elect all 11 council members. The exchange of the board is possible only when all members are newly elected. If this did not happen, the city would be managed by the council that was still serving.
Coalition negotiations began in Prague right after the elections on Sunday, October 2, when Pirates, Praha Sobě and STAN met in the afternoon and Spolu se STAN in the evening. Since then, they have met the Pirates Together, which also dealt with ANO. The pirates and STAN again asked to bring Prague to the negotiations, which Spolu refuses. This year’s negotiations on the new city management are the longest in the city’s history since 1993.
The Spolu coalition won the municipal elections in Prague this year, winning 19 mandates in the 65-member council. ANO ended second with 14 mandates. The third Pirates have 13 representatives and Praha Sobě 11 mandates. Five representatives belong to STAN, the sixth SPD won three mandates.
Press conference on the Vltava Philharmonic project. (October 11, 2022)
Author: ČTK / Vondrouš Roman