Prague, Jan 17 (CTK) – Ivan Bartos has defended the post of chairman of the Czech Pirate Party in an online election that was held on January 13-16, in which he won 65 percent of the votes of the party’s members, the Pirates write on their website.
The online election ended at 23:00 on Monday.
Bartos’s rival for the post was Mikulas Peksa, the party’s expert on foreign affairs and a member of the European Pirate Party (PPEU).
Bartos, 36, has been the Pirates leader for a long time. He led the party from 2009 to 2014 when he resigned after the failure in the elections to the European Parliament. He was re-elected chairman in April 2016.
The Czech Pirates have never entered the Chamber of Deputies, however, their representatives were elected to the Senate and the regional and municipal authorities.
In the latest general election in 2013 the party won 2.66 percent of the vote, while the threshold to enter parliament is 5 percent.
According to the STEM opinion poll conducted last month, the Pirates are supported by 3.3 percent of the voters. The next general election will be held in October. The party does not plan to run in the elections in an alliance with any other political groupings.
The Pirates recently consulted former right-wing ministers Vlastimil Tlusty and Martin Kuba (both opposition Civic Democrats, ODS) on their election programme .
Bartos said they talked with Tlusty about the idea of a basic income guaranteed by state, which they want to promote. With Kuba, they discussed international trade treaties.
Bartos said he would also like to talk about an amendment to the law on military intelligence with former BIS counter-intelligence director Jiri Ruzek and former chief-of-staff and defence minister Vlastimil Picek.
He said reports on all such meetings are available in the Pirate public register of lobbyist contacts.
