Okamura's complaint rejected, presidential race can start

Brno, Jan 10 (CTK) - The Czech Constitutional Court (US) Thursday rejected senator and eliminated presidential candidate Tomio Okamura's complaint, including his proposals to change the constitution and the implementing law on the direct presidential election and the election can start as planned on Friday.

Okamura called Constitutional Court's verdict on his complaint illogical and mendacious.

A bad law prevented him from running for president, he told reporters Thursday.

It ensues from the statements by his defence lawyer Klara Samkova that Okamura's team would turn to the European Court of Human Rights over his elimination from the election.

Czechs will choose their next president from nine candidates, not including. US chairman Pavel Rychetsky has started reading the arguments underlying the verdict. Okamura is not present in the courtroom.

The first round of the direct presidential election in the Czech Republic will be held on January 11-12. A possible second round is scheduled two weeks later.

Last week, the US rejected Okamura's proposal to adjourn the election.

On Monday, the judges decided in a closed session on how to deal with the complaint. However, the finding must be always announced to the public, due to which the court held its meeting Thursday.

Okamura first met the condition of gathering at least 50,000 signatures in support of his candidature. However, the Interior Ministry ruled that the number of signatures was below the limit after invalid ones were subtracted.

Okamura said the state had dubiously estimated the number of valid signatures on his petition.

"My rights have been violated by the fact that no one has tried hard to verify the genuine character of the signatures (on the presidential bid)," Okamura told reporters.

After the US verdict, he said he would probably not vote in the presidential election at all. He did not support any of the nine candidates.

He added that he would run in the next presidential election if the Czech Republic were in the same dreary condition like now.

In his complaint, Okamura also demanded that the US abolish the constitutional condition of 50,000 signatures for independent presidential candidates.

Besides, Okamura challenged two clauses in the implementing law regulating the conditions of the candidates' sheets and their registration.

He proposed that the two-day deadline to submit the protest at the Interior Ministry's decision on the candidates' registration be abolished as too short.

Most of the presidential candidates, except for Jana Bobosikova, Sovereignty extra-parliamentary party chairwoman, welcomed the US verdict. However, some of them raised objections to the direct presidential election implementing law.