Something special is happening in Prague. YES, he will support Svoboda, he rules with the Pirates
A rather curious situation is approaching at the Prague municipality. The coalition, together with the ANO movement, is to elect Bohuslav Svoboda as the new mayor on Thursday, but not the city council, which is at the level of the capital of the government period. Svoboda will thus only replace Zdenek Hřiby, who is serving his term, but will not have support in the remaining “pirate” council. The composition of the ruling coalition will thus be further discussed, ANO is interested, but also perhaps the STAN movement. On the other hand, the Pirates will not support the election of Svoboda as mayor, who have called the announced procedure a legal blunder and will want the Ministry of the Interior to comment on it.
Politicians ANO and Spolu announced their intention to elect at least Svoboda on Wednesday after they failed to agree on a common program. Originally, it was expected that the coalition would rule in a minority with the support of the ANO movement. “Since the meeting started on Sunday, that time was not enough. We have agreed for the moment that we will honor the winner of the election, we will support the election of associate professor Svoboda as mayor,” said ANO leader Patrik Nacher. According to the agreement, Svoboda is supposed to be the mayor with the powers that belong to it, but he must not be a member of the 11 members of the metropolitan council. The mushroom is to be moved among the rank-and-file councilors. Until the appointment of a new council, the old council consisting of Pirates, Praha Sobě, TOP 09 and STAN must rule with Svoboda.
“I do not perceive the fact that we have not yet found agreement in some areas as tragic. It is not only a sign that we fundamentally have a different view on some things, but also that the information that the Pirates and Praha Sobě deliberately and purposefully spread about how we and the ANO movement have agreed long ago was false,” he apparently stated future mayor Svoboda.
Outside the law, says Hřib
The outgoing mayor Hřib criticizes the agreement on the mayor outside the council, according to him, it is illegal. “The situation where someone is looking for a loophole in the law in a strange way, which clearly states that the mayor is part of the 11-member council and creates a structure in which the mayor is not part of the council, it is clearly written in the law, is clearly very similar a situation where the serving president, Miloš Zeman, interprets the constitution very creatively,” he criticized for ČT.
Act 131/2000 Coll. about the capital city of Prague, it actually says in paragraph 69 that “the council of the capital city of Prague is elected by the council of the capital city of Prague from among the members of the council of the capital city of Prague, it has 11 members and consists of the mayor of the capital city of Prague, the deputy mayors of the capital city of Prague and other members of the Council of the Capital City of Prague”.
The pirates have been negotiating with each other for a long time, but they cannot agree on the balance of power in the row. Another problem was the Pirates’ adherence to an alliance with the Praha Sobě movement, which Spolu rejected.
Conjecture over the coalition
The election of Svoboda as mayor should be the first point of Thursday’s meeting of Prague representatives. Together, ANO has a narrow majority of 33 votes in the 65-member council. The serving council will cease to exist only when all 11 members of the council have been elected.
Together, they initially negotiated a possible coalition on the ground plan of the government one, i.e. with the Pirates and STAN, but the negotiations ended unsuccessfully last week. Spolu then began negotiating with ANO about a minority temporary council composed of Spolu representatives. ANO presented 15 program points that it supports. The parties are now negotiating about them.
“We will not allow the advice itself at this time. “Since we weren’t able to shoot 100 percent at times, it’s fairer for us to do it this way,” Nacher said.
Roads open
According to Spolu and ANO, new paths are now being opened for negotiations on a majority coalition, and Nacher also admitted that he does not need to figure in them. In the middle was STAN, which does not have a very strong position with 5 representatives, but could have solved the problems with the connection of ANO, or the Pirates could convince the ground with a coalition in the government sector.
Its leader, Petr Hlaváček, told the editors of Echo24 that he does not want to cooperate with ANO. “Yesterday, at the regional committee, we voted on the provision that we continue to have a mandate to negotiate a coalition on the government’s plan and we do not support any cooperation with ANO, colleagues immediately informed the Spolu negotiation team and called on them to continue negotiations,” said Hlaváček.
Coalition negotiations began immediately after the elections. Since then, representatives of the individual parties have been meeting continuously. Together, they advocated the formation of a coalition period, such as the government one, i.e. with the Pirates and STAN, but the negotiations ended unsuccessfully. This year’s negotiations on the new city leadership are the longest in the history of Prague 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.