Prague, Aug 8 (CTK) – Czech President Milos Zeman will start another round of visits to regions in mid-September when he will visit the Moravia-Silesia Region and in October he will go to the Usti Region, his spokesman Jiri Ovcacek told CTK today.
It is not yet sure whether Zeman will manage to visit all regions by the end of his current five-year election term next March.
“It is logical that he (Zeman) will not manage to visit all regions by the year’s end,” Ovcacek said.
By now, he has visited each out of the 13 regions outside Prague four times and the regions paid over 17 million crowns for them.
Jan Outly, a member of the Office Supervising the Financial Management of Political Parties and Movements, says Zeman should reconsider his trips to regions during the campaign for his re-election next year, or to include them in the financial cap set for election spending.
Zeman paid the latest visit to Vysocina at the end of June.
In addition to the regions, visited towns and villages also have to bear some costs of Zeman’s visits.
Liberec Region governor Martin Puta would like to push through the practice according to which the Presidential Office would participate in the president’s visits in the future. Zeman has dismissed this.
He is also opposed to Outly’s opinion that he should consider the visits during his election campaign, or to include the costs of his meetings with citizens as fulfilment not involving money in the election limit of 50 million crowns.
Zeman says his visits are not an election campaign because he has been visiting the regions since he assumed the presidential post in 2013.
In addition, he says he does not call on anyone to vote for him in the next presidential election.
($1=22.135 crowns)
