Prague, April 7 (CTK) – The Communist Party is ready to start negotiating with ANO leader Andrej Babis, who heads a minority cabinet that did not win support from parliament, if President Milos Zeman assigns him with forming the next government, KSCM chairman Vojtech Filip told journalists on Saturday.
“We can tell more only after the meeting of Prime Minister Babis and President Zeman,” he said.
The Social Democrats (CSSD) ended their talks about their possible government with ANO on Thursday, saying Babis was unwilling to make any compromise. The CSSD and ANO planned to form a government that would be backed by the Communists.
Babis created a minority cabinet which did not win the confidence of the lower house of parliament in January and has been ruling in resignation since then. Zeman said Babis should try to form another government as his party clearly won the general election last autumn.
Filip said the KSCM would probably support Babis’s government in the confidence vote if the KSCM and ANO agreed on its programme.
He said he would not challenge the programme points which ANO and the KSCM discussed in the past weeks and reached an agreement.
Given the programme differences in foreign, security and tax policies, the KSCM is ready do to a lot to help create a standard government and tolerate it, but not support it, Filip said.
He said the KSCM would have no posts in the possible future cabinet.
Filip said he is curious to see how Babis is going to find a majority in the lower house of parliament.
ANO has 78 seats i the 200-member house and the KSCM 15 seats.
Filip said the KSCM would have to respect it if the ANO government was supported by the right-wing populist Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), though it would not be happy about it. He said the only thing on which the KSCM and the SPD seem to agree is support for the bill on referendum.
Apart from the KSCM, the SPD with 22 seats is the only party in parliament ready to support Babis’s government.
The other parties said it is unacceptable for them that Babis, who has been prosecuted over an EU subsidy fraud, would be prime minister. The CSSD was ready to accept Babis as prime minister provided that it controlled the Interior Ministry to secure that Babis would not influence his prosecution. Babis rejected this.
