Prague, Jan 5 (CTK) – The Czech extra-parliamentary Free Citizens Party (SSO) and the Party of Entrepreneurs will join forces in the campaign ahead of the autumn regional and Senate elections against the ANO chairman, Deputy PM and Finance Minister Andrej Babis, Lidove noviny (LN) writes yesterday.
Their massive election campaign will be generously sponsored by gambling mogul Ivo Valenta, who was elected senator for the Party of Entrepreneurs.
Billionaire businessman Babis´s ANO, which has led the parties´ preferences for long, is a member of the current centre-left coalition government, comprising also the Social Democrats (CSSD) and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL).
LN writes that the SSO and the Party of Entrepreneurs joined forces against Babis last year. On October 28, the national holiday marking the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, they protested against the introduction of electronic register of sales and the VAT ledger statements pushed through by Babis´s Finance Ministry.
Now the parties plan to support one another in the elections to the regional assemblies and one-third of the Senate.
“We concur on the issue of private businesses more than with other parties, this is why we cooperate exactly with the Party of Entrepreneurs,” SSO leader and MEP Petr Mach told the paper.
Both parties can benefit from one another, LN adds.
The Eurosceptical SSO scored success in the EP elections in 2014 in which it won one seat for its chairman, while the Entrepreneurs have a rich supporter, Valenta, the owner of the Synot gambling group.
By the end of last year, Valenta donated millions of crowns to the launching of a massive election campaign, LN says.
Yet, he claimed in an interview with LN last February that he was not planning to donate a high sum to the Party of Entrepreneurs. “It does not belong to me and I am not its member,” Valenta said then.
However, now Valenta is fighting for the entrepreneurs´ rights along with their party, LN says.
It writes that most recently, Valenta collected the signatures of 21 senators who jointly filed a constitutional complaint against VAT ledger statements. He also minds the government´s plan to raise taxes on gambling, which would considerably harm his business.
LN says the Party of Entrepreneurs wants to gain at least ten seats in the Senate election and form a group in the upper house. It has already announced some names of its candidates, including Jan Koukal, former Prague mayor for the Civic Democrats (ODS), and senator Jozef Regec, former cycling racer. In the wards in which the party will not field its own candidates, it will support the SSO.
Both parties will sign a framework agreement, while details of their cooperation will be up to their individual regional organisations. They are to announce more details on Wednesday, LN writes.
LN also writes that Valenta may score points in the upcoming elections by his anti-migrant rhetoric. He told commercial TV Nova in December that the government was listening to civic associations rather than to citizens during the migrant crisis and he praised President Milos Zeman´s critical view of mass migration.
Though Valenta has been living in Monaco for 14 years, he enjoys high support in the Zlin Region, south Moravia, where he was elected to the Senate. In 2004, he was charged in a football corruption scandal as a co-owner of the Synot football club and he was given a four-month suspended sentence and a 350,000-crown fine, LN writes.
($1=24.794 crowns)
