The collapse of the mayoral election in Prague. The leaders together urge the rest of the government coalition
Prague is supposed to be without an elected new mayor and city council until February. The original plan of the winning coalition Along with the fact that he is asking for support so far only for his candidate for mayor Bohuslav Svoboda (ODS), but he will not appoint new members of the council. However, only the representative movement ANO gave her support. In addition, councilor Hana Kordová Marvanová (for Spolu) refused to vote for her own candidate, thus violating the narrow majority of one vote. Due to the crisis in the negotiations between Spolu and Starosty s Piráty, the leaders of the coalition, including Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS), met with Prague representatives on Friday.
Prague will not have a new leadership until at least February 9, when Prague representatives want to meet again. The city has been led by Mayor Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates) and the old council, including some members who no longer have a representative mandate, for almost three months after the elections, and thus for a record long time. Due to the impasse, when the Spolu coalition failed to negotiate the support of parties other than the ANO movement, party chairmen Markéta Pekarová Adamová (TOP 09), Petr Fiala and Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL) held talks with their municipal representatives on Friday.
“The blocked situation in Prague does not please anyone. That is why we met again with the representatives of Spolu in Prague to discuss how to get out of this situation. We agreed that we perceive the citizens, and therefore we want to seek cooperation on the government’s floor plan,” Fiala said on the social network Twitter. At the same time, he added that “such a solution requires the will of both parties, including the Prague Pirates and STAN.” Government spokesman Václav Smolka did not want to comment on the conclusions of the meeting on Friday. The chairman of the STAN movement, Vít Rakušan, and the Pirates, Ivan Bartoš, on the other hand, do not want to get involved in the never-ending negotiations about a new coalition in Prague. According to them, the procedure of the Prague organizations is fine.
Meeting of the leaders of the coalition parties with Prague representatives for Spolu. Photo: Peter Fiala’s Twitter account
Their representatives refuse to enter a coalition with Spolu under the proposed conditions, where the winner wants both the mayor’s seat and a majority of six of the eleven members of the city councils. According to Together, they offered the desired resorts in the council. The pirates make the situation even more difficult by the fact that, after the elections, they created the so-called Stability Alliance with the previously local association Prague, and they refuse to act without them.
However, the parties must now sit down again at the negotiating table and try to find a compromise. They have less than two months to do it. The leader of the STAN movement, which did not have as many reservations about cooperation with Spolu as the Pirates, Petr Hlaváček, wrote that he was ready to start negotiations again.
“Bohuslav Svoboda did not become mayor today. decided that the threats of a coalition with ANO and the theatrical departure from the table were not based on real numbers. Now our words are coming true and I believe we can return to the table and act. The threat of legal uncertainty of the “double mayorship” has been banished,” he said. However, he did not want to give more details about other options to the Echo24 newspaper. Not even the serving mayor of Prague, Hřib, mentioned further meetings with Spolu.
The representative elected in this year’s elections for Spolu Hana Kordová Marvanová (at the same time, the councilor for legislation elected in the previous elections for STAN) did not respond to questions from the editors at the time of publication of the article after the mayoral election was blocked. However, she previously explained to ČTK that she is not against Svobod as such, but she is bothered by the agreement on tolerance with the ANO movement. “I am in favor of Mr. Svoboda becoming mayor, but I hate that it should be based on such an agreement with ANO. This is unacceptable to me and it is not right. I support Mr. Svoboda and we have talked about it for a long time.”
Outgoing candidate of the Spolu coalition for Prague mayor Bohuslav Svoboda (ODS). Photo: Radovan Jelen
Tomio Okamura’s SPD movement, which has the least coalition potential of all the parties, would also like to join the new round of negotiations. Okamura wants the new council made up of the current representatives to be up and running. “The SPD has always defined itself critically against the Pirates, and I watch Prague myself for the current morass in the city’s administration and its decline in all areas. (…) “It turned out to be a fiasco and an embarrassment. I believe that many citizens of Prague already regret how they voted. We are ready to officially negotiate with Spolu and ANO and help end this stalemate.”