Prague, April 29 (CTK) – The ANO movement has no alternative plan for a coalition pact if the negotiations about its government with the Social Democrats (CSSD) backed by the Communists (KSCM) fail, its representatives said in TV discussion programmes on Sunday.
“We have no plan B, but we are trying to make the plan A interesting for both our members and the CSSD members,” Chamber of Deputies chairman Radek Vondracek (ANO) told Prima TV.
In a programme of the public Czech Television (CT), ANO deputy chairwoman Jaroslava Pokorna Jermanova dismissed the possibility that ANO would launch talks on government cooperation with the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) of Tomio Okamura if the CSSD rejected the alliance with ANO.
Jermanova rejected the CSSD claim to remove three SPD politicians from the high parliamentary posts they were occupying.
The Social Democrats demanded this because of the controversial statements of SPD politicians and in order to ruin the informal coalition of ANO, the KSCM and SPD, which joined forced in key parliamentary votes and pushed through issues and nominations that the CSSD opposed. ANO, the SPD and the KSCM have 115 seats in the 200-member Chamber of Deputies.
Christian Democrat (KDU-CSL) leader Pavel Belobradek told CT that they were possible governments not relying on support from the Communists or the SPD, but the criminally prosecuted ANO leader Andrej Babis is blocking these possibilities by insisting on keeping the post of prime minister.
The KDU-CSL and the CSSD, same as the right-wing opposition parties, consider it unacceptable for a prosecuted politician to be a cabinet member. Babis is suspected of an EU subsidy fraud.
“Elections do not decide on whether somebody is guilty or innocent,” Belobradek said in reaction to Jermanova’s argument that Babis the highest number of preferential votes in the general election last autumn.
Jermanova rejected the idea of ANO nominating its current Defence Minister Karla Slechtova for prime minister.
