Prague, Jan 4 (CTK) – The Czech Pirate Party will elect a new leadership, while its chairman Ivan Bartos will be defending the post without any rival candidate at the national forum to meet in Brno on January 6-7.
The weekend forum is also to deal with proposed changes in the party’s statutes, for instance, rules of the approval of new members and restricting the plurality of posts in the party. Expert groups will also meet within the forum.
The Pirates entered the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Czech parliament, for the first time in history in the last October general election in which they fared third gaining almost 11 percent of the vote. They have 22 MPs in the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies.
The election of a five-member national leadership is based on the Pirate Party’s statutes. It must take place within three months since the election to the Chamber of Deputies, held on October 20-21.
Bartos, who led the Pirates to the Chamber of Deputies, will seek re-election at the Brno meeting.
In his candidate’s speech, released on the party’s discussion forum, he said he would like to focus the party’s transformation into an organisation that would “offer a chance to participate in active politics to several thousand members” in another term at the party’s helm.
He would also like to keep promoting the party’s programme priorities in the media and secure bigger openness of the Chamber of Deputies, he said.
Bartos said in his speech that he did not expect the Pirates to change their stance on their participation in the government, which they had so far refused.
“This is why Pirates define themselves as a constructive opposition for the moment,” he added.
“Our goal is to maximally use the exiting opportunities to be able to influence as much as possible. In the future, in which I have believed as much as in the sense of the Pirate Party since the very beginning, we will be able, using the newly gained experience, to abandon the role of opposition with support of voters and define changes ourselves,” he added.
MPs Jakub Michalek, Mikulas Peksa, Radek Holomcik, Olga Richterova and Petr Tresnak are running for the Pirates’ deputy chairpersons. Besides, university teacher Giuseppe Maiello, Altar publishing house director Martin Kucera and InAverz health NGO head Zdenek Hrib seek the posts.
Each party member may attend the national forum.
Most of its meetings are online. However, under the statutes, a “physical” meeting of the national forum must be held at least once a year. A leadership is elected and crucial votes, for instance on changes to the statutes, take place at such meetings.
