Prague, Oct 3 (CTK) – Some Czechs, mainly elderly people, signed what they considered a petition submitted to them by a political party, unaware that by doing so they consented to running in the October 7-8 regional election, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) wrote on Monday.
Small parties, which are short of candidates, addressed people in the streets to “recruit” them as candidates earlier this year. A person’s signature was enough for them to appear on the list of candidates, the paper writes.
It is mainly pensioners who gave their signatures in the belief that they were signing a petition or expressing support for a party, the paper continues.
An elderly lady from southern Bohemia was recently surprised by reading her name on the list of candidates running for the grouping named No Illegal Migration – Let Money Go to Our People Instead, which associates several small extra-parliamentary entities, MfD writes.
Her candidacy is valid, though she says she believed she was signing the grouping’s petition in April.
One of the grouping’s leaders, Petr Hannig, admitted that they really recruited candidates in the streets, but the people always knew what they were signing.
After being addressed by the group’s members, the 63-year-old woman chatted with them, all the time believing that they were discussing security in Europe and migrants, of whom she is afraid, like many other Czechs.
Finally, she signed something, unaware of having confirmed her election candidacy in the South Bohemia Region, the daily writes.
This woman and other candidates whom parties may have recruited in the street, however, figure in the last, quite unpromising positions on the respective lists of candidates with no chance of being elected, the paper writes.
This also applies to some candidates who signed their candidacy knowingly, persuaded by parties’ promoters.
“They visited me twice or thrice, they actually induced me to [accept the candidacy]. I signed it only because this party does not want to apologise for the [post-war] transfer of Sudeten Germans from the border areas. I remember the transfer well and I dislike the way politicians apologise for it on every occasion,” Frantisek Stropek, an 84-year-old pensioner from Jindrichuv Hradec, who runs for the above grouping, is quoted as saying.
By no means does he expect being elected to the regional assembly or becoming a regional politician, he said.
