Prague, Dec 12 (CTK) – The Czech Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party is being compared to the ultra-right Republicans (SPR-RSC) in the 1990s, but it is more ambitious and has reached a quite strong position in the lower house, Jakub Pokorny writes in daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) today.
Moreover, unlike the Republicans with whom the other parties in parliament “did not talk,” the populist, anti-EU SPD is offering votes for the nascent minority government that PM-designate Andrej Babis has been seeking in vain so far, Pokorny says.
The next four years will show whether the other democratic parties will manage to “tame” the SPD.
However, the fate of a party is primarily in the voters’ hands. Those who catapulted SPD leader Tomio Okamura to power, can topple him as well in the next election, possibly because he submits solutions that do not work and he is unable to push them through anyway, Pokorny points out.
But this also means that other parties that have so far ignored Okamura’s voters and have not offered solutions to their problems must pay attention to them, Pokorny concludes.
Andrej Babis, leader of the winning ANO, faces criticism from all sides even before he started heading his government, but there is no other trustworthy alternative to him after the general election except for giving confidence to the Pirates, Jan Keller writes in Pravo today.
He says a possible government of the four right-centrist parties associated in the Democratic Bloc, the Civic Democrats (ODS), TOP 09, Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) and Mayors and Independents (STAN), if it won confidence, would bring never-ending disputes about whether the Czech Republic should more integrate into the EU core, which TOP 09 wants, or become more Eurosceptical, which is in line with the ODS.
The idea of a left-wing government is even more absurd since the mutual aversion between the two leftist parties, the Social Democrats (CSSD) and Communists (KSCM), is much higher than the number of their common programme points, Keller adds.
Under such circumstances, the purest way out might be if both right-wing and left-wing parties jointly expressed confidence in the Pirates, the newcomers in the Chamber of Deputies.
They have no political past, not much is known about them, they are not yet connected with any scandals and have not disgusted voters yet, unlike the mainstream parties, Keller writes.
Christian Democrat (KDU-CSL) chairman and outgoing Deputy PM Pavel Belobradek aptly calls Andrej Babis’s steps the preparation for “a hostile takeover of the Czech Republic” and Babis’s behaviour indicates he is right, Alexandr Mitrofanov writes elsewhere in Pravo today.
It really evokes a hostile takeover – a procedure used by oligarchs when subjugating smaller companies, Mitrofanov says,
Belobradek warns of Babis’s alliance with President Milos Zeman that might enable them to exert pressure on other parties to give in.
Belobradek also denies Babis’s statements that he wanted to negotiate with the Christian Democrats (and other democratic parties) about their participation in his government.
“Belobradek said previously that only two kinds of people existed for Babis: subordinates and enemies,” Mitrofanov writes.
However, Prime Minister-designate Babis avoids all considerations about his absence from the government like the plague and thereby confirms Belobradek’s conclusions, Mitrofanov writes.
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