Prague, Dec 15 (CTK) – Former Czech president Vaclav Klaus is striving for the formation of a broad platform on the migrant crisis, associating political and other entities, under his aegis, he said in an interview with CTK on Tuesday.
The platform should help the government gain mandate from citizens to refuse to accept refugees, he added.
“I have sent a letter to the chairpersons of various political parties, associations, organisations and movements and we have led a dialogue for about a month,” said Klaus, explaining his involvement in the migration issues.
“We were seeking the possibility to form a certain social platform that would like to raise the appeal to a higher level,” he added.
Klaus, 74, told CTK that he had addressed 20-25 entities, including the parties in parliament. They have reached consensus on the dangerous character of the migrant wave during their debates, he added.
On the contrary, he said, some political parties are so powerful that they do not want to join a platform created outside them, which is a problem.
However, some parties in parliament are willing to join the platform, Klaus said without elaborating.
He only said he had not invited to a dialogue, for instance, the Bloc against Islam and Tomio Okamura, chairman of the populist Freedom and Direct Democracy movement, with whose opinions he cannot identify.
The platform should be as broad as possible, ecumenical in this respect, in which the very different entities could be involved, from the opposition right-wing Civic Democrats (ODS) to the leftist Communists (KSCM), he added.
Klaus also said the aim of the platform would be to support the government that should understand that it would be good to lean on the citizens’ opinions on the issue discussed. It would, for instance, facilitate its position in the talks in Brussels where it could say if the EU exerted pressure on it that it had no mandate from the Czech public, he added.
“This is why I would be glad if the government addressed the public itself in this respect,” Klaus said, adding that it could be done in a referendum.
Klaus is opposed it the law on a general referendum. However, he said he would support the idea of one referendum in ten years.
“If a referendum were to be held once in a decade, it should be exactly on this issue,” he added.
Klaus said he considered it natural that he would lead such a platform, but that he had definitely no ambition to gain any “political capital” from it.
Klaus also commented on the words by PM Bohuslav Sobotka and other politicians about the Czech society turning fascistoid as a consequence of the migrant crisis. Klaus said he cannot see such tendencies.
If the mainstream political parties cannot cope with migration, it is normal that other groupings emerge that want to solve the problem on their own, he said. “To call them a priori fascistoid is impudent and arrogant of these people,” he said.
