Prague, Nov 6 (CTK) – The second volume of collected interviews with Czech President Milos Zeman will be published during the presidential election campaign, in which he seeks re-election, and it is advertised also on billboards, according to CTK sources.
However, Zeman previously repeatedly said he would not lead a campaign supporting his re-election.
The book entitled “We Can Rule Ourselves” and published by the Olympia publishers is to come out on Friday.
Just like the first volume published last September, it contains interviews with Zeman conducted by Radim Panenka, Parlamentni listy server journalist, complemented by commentaries of Presidential Office spokesman Jiri Ovcacek and photos by Hana Brozkova.
The Office Supervising the Financial Management of Political Parties and Movements said whether a book was part of an election campaign depended on how it was used.
“If it’s a book that is normally sold in bookshops, we don’t consider it a part of the election campaign,” Jan Outly, from the office, told CTK on Monday.
A similar case was assessed by the office before the October general election, when the book “What I Dream About When I Happen to be Sleeping” written by ANO movement chairman Andrej Babis was assessed as being part of the general election campaign, because it was distributed at public rallies for free.
As a result, ANO had to include its publishing costs in its total campaign overheads. Babis said the number of billboards he used had to be reduced, too.
Leaflets with Zeman’s portrait and a list of his political career milestones were distributed into some people’s letterboxes before. Zeman said he was grateful for them, but he did not initiate them and he cannot prevent anyone from campaigning on his behalf.
