Prague, July 26 (CTK) – Tomas Kratky, 25, was elected the new head of the Young ANO group, which associates members of the ANO movement of Finance Minister Andrej Babis who are aged under 35, the movement’s spokesman Jaromir Hason has told CTK.
“Our priority now will be to further increase the number of the Young ANO members and to give feedback to the big ANO. We would also like to get involved in the structures of young European political organisations,” said Kratky, who has been the coordinator of ANO’s regional managers until now.
Kratky’s deputies are Jakub Komarek, Martin Haushalter, Jan Volny and Ondrej Vanek.
Kratky replaced Katerina Reiblova who gave up the post of Young ANO leader.
In connection with Babis’s dispute over planned changes in the insurance business, media wrote that Reiblova works for a company that arranges insurance for the Agrofert holding owned by Babis.
The ANO movement has about 2750 members and its Young ANO faction has 120 members.
In the late 1990s and the 2000s, Czech politics was dominated by the Civic Democrats (ODS) and the Social Democrats (CSSD), but the right-wing ODS lost most of its supporters in the past several years.
The centrist ANO led by billionaire Babis has been the most popular party in the country since March 2014, followed by the CSSD. Along with the small Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), ANO and the CSSD have been ruling the country for 18 months now.
Babis founded ANO in 2012. “Ano” means “yes” in Czech, but the acronym stood for the Association of Dissatisfied Citizens and Babis sharply criticised all established politicians. In the campaign before the late 2014 general election, however, ANO scored rather surprising success with a positive campaign in a Yes, We Can style.
