Prague, Dec 14 (CTK) – Czech President Milos Zeman has invited the prime minister for an annual New Year luncheon, his spokesman Jiri Ovcacek told CTK on Thursday, adding that this will be the first luncheon to be attended by Andrej Babis (ANO) as the brand-new prime minister.
The luncheon will take place in the presidential chateau of Lany, central Bohemia, shortly after the New Year’s Day, the spokesman said.
Babis’s wife Monika has been invited as well, he said.
In the past years, the tradition of New Year luncheons was maintained by Zeman and Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD, the previous prime minister, despite their rather tense relations.
At their luncheons in Lany, the last of which took place on January 2, 2017, they discussed the events and developments of the past year and the plans for the new year.
Daily Pravo wrote yesterday that Zeman had not invited Senate chairman Milan Stech (CSSD) to the ceremonial appointment of Babis’s minority government at Prague Castle on Wednesday.
Stech confirmed to Pravo that he had not received an invitation and that Zeman repeatedly did not invite him to various events of late.
Stech said he and Zeman differed on some of the events held on the October 28 national holiday marking the anniversary of the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918.
To explain Zeman’s decision not to invite Stech for the ceremony on Wednesday, Ovcacek said it is the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, whom the new government will ask for a confidence motion, and that lower house chairman Radek Vondracek (ANO) did attend the ceremony.
Nevertheless, Zeman invited the Senate head when appointing the interim cabinet of Jiri Rusnok in mid-2013 and Sobotka’s cabinet in early 2014.
Unlike in previous years, no charity ball will be hosted by the presidential couple in early 2018, which Ovcacek explained by Zeman’s busy schedule.
