Prague, July 19 (CTK) – Musician, composer and producer Petr Hannig, 71, chairman of The Reasonable marginal extra-parliamentary party, will run for president next year, he announced at a press conference today.
He said he would like to follow up the policy of current President Milos Zeman, but he would like to offer a different form of behaviour to voters.
Hannig’s candidacy is supported by the ultra-right National Democracy of Adam B. Bartos.
“I have given consent to my candidacy because the other official candidates are of a completely different political orientation than the current president. If President Zeman did not run for any reason, the current policy of the head of state would not be preserved,” Hannig said about the motivation of his candidacy.
Hannig has tried to enter politics several times. He founded the Party of Common Sense that now operates under the name The Reasonable. It has regularly run in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate since 2002.
Last year, Hannig won 2.3 percent of the vote in the Prague 11 ward in the Senate elections. His party gained 0.3 percent of the vote in the previous general election in 2013.
Hannig did not run in the first direct presidential election five years ago.
Zeman, 72, who was elected for a five-year term in 2013, will seek re-election in 2018.
Besides, former Science Academy chairman Jiri Drahos, 68, lyricist and former businessman Michal Horacek, 64, and physician Marek Hilser, 41, will contest the presidency. Vratislav Kulhanek, 73, former chairman of the Skoda car maker’s board, will run as a candidate of the recently restored Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA). Other candidates are businessman Igor Sladek and Karel Stogl, who headed the office of former prime minister Jiri Rusnok.
