Hradec Kralove, East Bohemia, Jan 22 (CTK) – Czech Greens will seek the votes in the autumn election to the Chamber of Deputies along with the Change Movement and members of the defunct Greens Movement, party leader Matej Stropnicky told journalists yesterday.
Talks with other partners are still underway, Stropnicky said.
At its national congress, the party approved its long-term manifesto, unveiled a shadow government and changed its logo.
“The party is quite unified. It has managed to ally with a breakaway movement,” Stropnicky, a son of Defence Minister Martin Stropnicky (ANO), said.
In the past the Greens Movement broke away from the party and now it was cancelled in order to renew its collaboration with the Greens party.
The Change Movement has been successful in the Liberec Region.
“We will follow up the tradition that has been existing with the Greens party for a long time,” Jan Korytar, from the Change Movement and former head of the town of Liberec, has said.
At the weekend, the delegates to the party congress outlined the main conditions for future partners.
The Greens are of the view that the liberal state was threatened because the ANO movement had intertwined economic and political power.
In addition, the Czech Republic is lagging behind the surrounding world in the sphere of education and salaries, the Greens said.
The Czech Republic’s competition bonus through cheap manpower should no longer be the government strategy, they added.
“The alliance must have its logic,” Stropnicky said.
These may be the parties to the left and to the right of the centre, but the partners have to agree on basic priorities, he added.
The party manifesto is based on the principle of ecological tax reform.
The large companies that exploit non-renewable sources should be more taxed, Stropnicky said.
On the other hand, the business forms that bring along innovations and do not burden the environment should be supported, he added.
“Only this restructuring may bring a rise in salaries, which is the main problem in the Czech Republic at the moment,” Stropnicky said.
The Greens were last able to cross the five-percent threshold to enter the Chamber of Deputies in 2006. Since then, they have never been able to repeat the result. The latest polls are giving them about a 3 percent ranking.
On Saturday, the party changed its abbreviation from SZ to the Greens.
pv/dr
