Together in Prague, he gives up mostly in the council. Finally a suitable offer, the Pirates respond
Four months after the municipal elections, Prague has no new mayor or council. The Together coalition has now come up with a new power distribution offer that it wants to lure the Pirates to. In the capital city’s eleven-member council, Spolu representatives would occupy five positions, including the mayoral post for Bohuslav Svoboda from the ODS. The Pirates and the Mayors would share the next six. The Pirates are interested in the proposal, they will discuss it on Tuesday.
According to the latest proposal of the Spolu coalition (ODS, TOP 09, KDU-ČSL), the Pirates would have four seats and STAN two in the council. Together, in the new offer, in addition to the majority in line, the demand for the creation of the post of investment square, which would fall to the ODS and be in charge of all major investments across the departments, was also given up. “And we offered our coalition partners tasks that we wanted to carry out ourselves,” said Svoboda.
The Pirates won the positions of councilors for property management, the environment, legislation, Smart City and innovation, as well as the contribution of the first square for transport, which, according to earlier information, was interested in outgoing mayor Zdenek Hřib. For the STAN movement, he is counting on an offer with two councilors – for territorial development and for education and sports.
Together, it would be in charge of finance, housing with social areas and healthcare, culture and councilor for infrastructure and city services. “We appreciate this offer, which came four months after the election and represents a move in the right direction. The offer is really worthy of the election results,” Jana Komrsková, a member of the pirate negotiation team, told Aktuálně.cz.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Pirates have a meeting with representatives of the Spolu coalition, which, according to Komrsková, can bring about a fundamental shift. The Pirates need to clear some things up on her. “For example, in the case of their governor for the establishment of the position of councilor for city services and infrastructure, it is not clear to us if this is not a variation of the originally proposed investment governor, which the Pirates and STAN unequivocally rejected already in December,” said Hřib.
The question remains how the Pirates will approach the alliance with Prague. The offer from Spolu does not apply to Jan Čižínský’s group. However, the pirates want Prague to be their own, they are still in the council, with which to maintain good relations. “I am of the opinion that a government-style coalition (Together, Spolu, Pirates and STAN) expanded to include Prague made logical sense, but I also understand Spolu. I won’t give you a detailed statement on that, we will first come to an agreement with Prague itself and the coalition,” answered Komrsková .
Representatives will meet on February 16
Negotiations for the new leadership of the capital have been going on for almost four months since the elections that took place at the end of September. It is thus the longest in the history of the city since the creation of the Czech Republic. At first, the agreement was hindered by the fact that Spolu wanted a seat on the council for the indicted folklorist Jan Wolf. The Pirates refused to do so.
The pirates were not even satisfied with the fact that Together with the election result of around 25 percent claimed a majority in the council. After that, they created the Stability Alliance with Prague and wanted to join the new council only together. But again they refused to negotiate with Spolu.
Before the last council meeting in mid-December, negotiations broke down on a new proposal by the Spolu coalition, according to which the area of transport would fall to the Pirates, but it was created according to the new position of councilor for investment – which was supposed to be a representative of the ODS. He would have under him all major investment actions across the departments. According to the Pirates, the deputy for transport would in the end only deal with road sweeping and snow removal, but would have no influence on essential investments.
They therefore agreed together with the ANO movement that they would at least elect Svoboda as mayor at the December assembly. Together, Spolu and ANO have a narrow majority of one vote in the council. However, the agreement fell through at the last minute, because Hana Kordová Marvanová, elected for ODS, refused to vote with representatives of Babiš’s movement. Thus, they postponed the election of the mayor and councilors to the next council, which is scheduled to meet on February 16.
Video: Pirates chairman Ivan Bartoš on negotiations in Prague (6/12/2022)
In an interview with Aktuálně.cz, the president of the Pirates, Ivan Bartoš, also answered the question whether he or Zdeněk Hřib has the decisive word in the negotiations about the management of Prague. | Video: Radek Bartoníček, Dominika Hromková