Prague, March 1 (CTK) – The Czech extra-parliamentary Party of Citizens’ Rights (SPO), known as loyal fans of President Milos Zeman, will run in the October general election separately, it announced on its website yesterday, though Zeman earlier recommended that the SPO ally with the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement (SPD).
The SPO and the SPD, a minor opposition party of lawmaker Tomio Okamura, ran together in some regions in the regional elections last autumn.
Okamura, however, has refused further similar cooperation.
“The SPO announces that it will run in the general election separately. We will be defending the rights of all citizens of the Czech Republic. We support the policy of our honorary chairman Milos Zeman,” SPO head Jan Veleba wrote.
He called on voters to cast their ballots in support of the SPO programme and President Zeman.
At the SPO national congress in February, Veleba told the delegates that the party’s programme should lean on two pillars: Czech roots and the fundamental rights of Czech citizens.
Zeman co-founded the party before his early 2013 election as president.
In 2010, he became the party’s first chairman, but he resigned from the post after the party lost the general election in 2010, gaining 4.3 percent of the vote. The SPO elected him its honorary chairman in 2013.
In the following general election in October 2013, the SPO failed again, gaining 1.51 percent of the vote.
The SPO has two senators in the upper house of parliament, one of them being Veleba, former Czech Agriculture Chamber head, and the other Frantisek Cuba, former communist agriculture protagonist and now an adviser to Zeman.
rtj/dr/kva
