The Spolu coalition in Prague will give way to the Pirates and STAN: offered them a majority in the council
The Prague coalition Together (ODS, TOP 09, KDU-ČSL) decided to make a concession to the Pirates and the STAN movement and offered them six seats in the eleven-member councils of the capital. Only five seats would remain, including the post of mayor, which Bohuslav Svoboda from the ODS is supposed to be. The Pirates would have four places and STAN two, spokeswoman Lenka Mottlová said in a statement sent to Echo24.
“In order for the government to give up the foundation of the coalition, we are mostly in the council, the position of the investment square, and we offered our coalition partners the gestures that we ourselves wanted. We want to go to the municipality’s leadership not because we are applying for a position, but so that the city leadership will finally start functioning and the mayoress will no longer rule without a voter’s mandate,” Bohuslav Svoboda said of the candidate. Negotiations for a new coalition have been ongoing in the capital since the elections at the end of last September.
The winning coalition Together from the beginning of the attempt to assemble the council on the government’s plan. The Pirates, in particular, have taken a reserved approach to cooperation from the beginning. That is why they created the so-called Alliance of Stability with the movement of Mayor Jan Čižinský Praha Sobě. The Spolu coalition previously demanded a majority in the city council, but neither the Pirates nor the STAN movement liked that.
“The offer is extremely accommodating. We have clearly declared from the beginning that our goal is the formation of a coalition on the government’s plan. And this offer is the proof. At the same time, we will enable the fulfillment of our program priorities, although we were very interested in some events. As part of the efforts to create a coalition, however, we retreated. For these tasks, for example in transport, we expect that if the coalition partners accept our offer, the program team will then meet. They will have the task of finding a compromise so that the program priorities of the individual parties are fulfilled,” adds Zdeněk Zajíček, a member of the Spolu negotiation team.
Negotiations on the new leadership of the capital city lasted almost four months, thus the longest since the creation of the Czech Republic. Since the elections in the fall of 1994, the longest wait for the election of the new city leadership was a month and a half. In 2010, the council and mayor were elected 45 days after the election, four years later it took a day longer. In 1994 and 1998, the mayors were elected less than two weeks after the elections.