Biggest Czech opposition party now in coalition with fascists in three regions

ANO, SOCDEM and SPD to govern the Vysočina Region, Martin Kukla to be governor

ANO, the single party that scored the most votes in the recent elections to the Regional Assemblies, formed a coalition government in late September with the PRO, SPD and Tricolor ticket in the Vysočina Region. SOCDEM (the Social Democrats) will join the coalition as well. The group will have 23 of the seats in the 45-member Regional Assembly. Czech MP Martin Kukla, the regional leader of the ANO movement, will become governor.

Kukla said he does not view the slim, one-vote majority the coalition will hold as stable. “It is a majority. Naturally right now we are planning to reach out to the other parties to negotiate with them about their support,” he said.

ANO will have seven seats on the nine-seat Regional Council. In addition to Kukla, those seated on the council will be Otto Vopěnka, Pavel Franěk, Jiří Pokorný, JIří Horký, Miloš Hrůza and Pavel Řehoř.

The Social Democrats hold two regional assembly seats there now. The ex-governor of Vysočina, Jiří Běhounek, and the current Vice-Governor Vladimír Novotný are the Social Democratic members. “Since we care about Vysočina, we are looking for ways to make this work,” said Běhounek, who was the frontrunner for the SOCDEM party. He called the coalition agreement an example of the art of the possible. “Naturally I anticipate hearing various critical voices, but that won’t make me change my mind,” he said. The main thing, in his view, is that the promises to develop the region be kept.

The third coalition partner, the ticket of PRO, SPD and Tricolor, may now occupy the chair of the committee in the Regional Assembly that will review the construction and security of the new blocks at the Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant.

ANO won the elections to the Regional Assembly there with 34.77 % of the vote and has 18 seats. The ticket of PRO, SPD and Tricolor scored 5.5 % of the vote and thus has two seats, one for Czech MP Radek Koten (SPD) and the other for the regional chair of PRO, Andrea Peňáz. SOCDEM has three seats, with 5.65 % of the vote.

ANO and SPD to govern the Olomouc Region: Okleštěk promises stable government

One day after the controversial coalition was concluded in the Vysočina Region, the winning ANO movement agreed to form a coalition in the Olomouc Region with the Libertarians (Svobodní) and the joint ticket of PRO, the SPD and Tricolor. In the 55-member Regional Assembly this dual coalition will have a majority of 31 votes. The governor will be Ladislav Okleštěk of ANO.

ANO was in the opposition of the Regional Assembly there during the last four years, when the region was governed by a coalition between the Allies for the Olomouc Region (Spojence pro Olomoucký kraj), the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the Mayors and Independents (STAN) and the Pirates.

Negotiations were started by ANO immediately after the polls closed. The movement met with all of the parties whose representatives will be seated in the newly-elected Regional Assembly. The leaders of Allies24 (Spojenců24), ODS and STAN, however, gradually announced they would remain in opposition. The last to do so was ODS, which refused to join ANO in a coalition with the Libertarians, PRO, SPD and Tricolor. ANO, according to Okleštěk, would have preferred the three-party coalition, but after Allies24, ODS and STAN refused to join, the only partners left to choose from were the ones he is now in government with.

“This coalition was the most successful in negotiating with us and we intend to collaborate with them for the next four years in the Olomouc Region. I believe our cooperation will bear fruit because we found no points of contention about what we want to get done together. We believe the Olomouc Region is heading in the right direction,” Okleštěk commented.

When deciding the form of the new regional coalition, Okleštěk said that what played a role was the overlap between their electoral programs and the fact that both ANO’s campaign and program had defined the movement as opposing the then-coalition government at both the regional and state level. “Because the voters gave us so many votes [40.4 %], we cannot disappoint them. That was one of the principal reasons why we decided for this coalition,” he pointed out.

ANO has 26 seats in the Regional Assembly there. Second place went to the Mayors for Olomouc Region (Starostové pro Olomoucký kraj) with five seats. Fifth place went to ODS with five seats. Sixth place went to the coalition Enough! (Stačilo!) with four seats. The ANO movement needed just two more votes, therefore, to secure the majority in the Regional Assembly.

ANO is collaborating with right-wing extremists in the Moravian-Silesian Region even though it already has a majority

The ANO movement has also decided to collaborate with right-wing extremist parties in the Moravian-Silesian Region. Even though ANO won a majority of seats and could govern independently, it has decided to bring PRO, SPD and Tricolor into the regional coalition. Governor Josef Bělica (ANO) defended the move by saying the parties were able, during a short amount of time, to approve the conditions for their cooperation and to offer ANO their own overlapping program points in areas such as culture and the environment.

“We ultimately agreed to collaborate with the SPD, they were able to approve of cooperating with us today in the course of 90 minutes. The portfolio that we offered them on the Regional Council is the environment with territorial planning and culture including heritage,” Bělica said.

ANO won a majority of seats in the 65-member Regional Assembly. With the support of the four representatives from the joint ticket of PRO, SPD and Tricolor, the coalition will have 39 seats. Bělica said ANO will hold nine seats on the Regional Council, while the joint ticket of PRO, SPD and Tricolor will hold two seats.

Besides the governorship, the ANO movement will control the transportation agenda, which will remain in the hands of Radek Podstawka, while Martin Gebauer will still control health and Šárka Šimoňáková will still control travel and tourism. The new representatives on the Regional Council will be Jan Veřmiřovský for the schools, Šárka Vilamová for strategic development, Michal Kokošek for investment and property, Stanislav Kopecký for social affairs, while Jana Murová will be a council member too. The PRO, SPD and Tricolor joint ticket will be represented by the councillor for culture, the regional chair of the SPD, Peter Harvánek, which the councillor for environmental issues will be Pavel Staněk.

“We have always done our best to maximize our ability to advocate for our program. On the one hand, it may seem surprising at first glance, but on the other hand, we have behaved decently, explained our demands and what it is that we want to advocate, and therefore ANO assessed that we have rather interesting overlaps when it comes to our programs,” Harvánek pointed out.

ANO won the elections in the Moravaian-Silesian Region with 35 seats. Second place went to the group of the Mayors and Public Figures for the Region (Starostové a Osobnosti pro kraj) with 11 seats, while third place went to Moravian-Silesian Region Together (Spolu MSK) with 10 representatives. Fourth place went to the Enough! (Stačilo!) coalition, and fifth place went to the PRO, SPD and Tricolor coalition with four regional assembly members.

The joint ticket of PRO, SPD and Tricolor ran a racist campaign

The campaign by PRO, SPD and Tricolor was repeatedly criticized for disseminating hate and dividing society.

One of their election ads featured a photo of a dark-skinned man in a bloody shirt wielding a bloody knife and the message: “Deficiencies in health care will not be solved by importing ‘surgeons’.” Critics called it racist and police are investigating.

Another ad featured an AI-generated image of Romani boys smoking cigarettes. The ROMEA organization, Romani community member Cyril Koky, who is also the Central Bohemian Coordinator for National Minorities, and others filed a report of a crime over the ad against the PRO party, the SPD movement and its chair Tomio Okamura, Tricolor and their marketers.

Babiš: I’m glad we’re putting together majorities without the nationally governing parties, but we are not interfering with negotiations regionally

Andrej Babiš, chair of the ANO movement, previously said he is satisfied with how his party is managing to create regional coalition governments in which the parties in the central government are not included. In an interview for the daily Deník N he said that his priority is to put together majority coalitions regionally without the influence of centrally-governing parties such as ODS, Pirates, STAN or TOP 09.

“I’m glad our people in the regions are managing to form majorities without the parties in [central] government. That’s what we prefer, but it’s not possible everywhere,” Babiš told Deník N. He also emphasized that the leadership of ANO is not interfering with the coalition negotiations regionally. “The coalitions are being negotiated by the regional organizations on their own and they inform me and the presidium of the movement as to how they are going. We’ve not interfered with them, though,” he said.

Just like Babiš, ANO shadow prime minister and first vice-chair of the movement Karel Havlíček confirmed the party leadership has not been interfering with the regional negotiations. “We have not been intervening in any essential way,” he told Deník N.

Havlíček rejected speculations that these negotiations are a preparation or testing of collaboration with regional partners ahead of the upcoming elections to Parliament in the fall of next year. “Under no circumstances is this about testing. Things were similar with forming coalitions at the local level,” explained Havlíček. In his view, the main aim of the movement is to create “stable coalitions, if possible” which will arrange for the effective administration of the Regional Authorities.

Okamura: SPD has coalition potential and wants to be part of the next Government

According to Okamura, his movement’s participation in three regional executives shows it has coalition potential and the ambition to become part of the next Government.

“The coalitions agreed with the participation of the SPD in the regions shows our movement has significant coalition potential,” Okamura declared. He also emphasized that the SPD no longer wants to be in opposition but is interested in really influencing policy and politics.

Okamura claims the SPD successes in the regions confirm his movement is not just one of protest, but that it has the ability to put together functional coalitions and contribute to governing. “It’s not true that we want to be in opposition, we want to be seated in the Government,” he previously told Deník N. In his view, it is now being shown that the SPD has managed, together with its partners, to significantly succeed in negotiations for coalitions in the regions, which could impact statewide politics after the next elections to Parliament.

The SPD chair said he is ceratin the results of the negotiations on regional coalitions are a clear demonstration of his movement’s amibitions and signal that the SPD does have competent people who could contribute to leading the country.