Prague, July 24 (CTK) – Czech lower house deputy Kristyna Zelienkova is leaving the ANO movement because of the Capi hnizdo case, a lack of standard discussion in the party, and her disapproval of the politics that ANO pursued in the town where she lived, she said on her Facebook profile on Sunday.
On Friday, Zelienkova announced her departure from the ANO government party of Andrej Babis, billionaire and finance minister. She said then she will present the reasons for her step soon.
Zelienkova said on Sunday she will also leave the ANO group in the lower house of parliament, and that she will keep her mandate of a lower house deputy.
Earlier this year, she criticised Babis for his unwillingness to explain who owned his Capi Hnizdo (Stork Nest) countryside resort at the time when it received controversial subsidies from the EU.
Zelienkova said on Sunday Babis had carried out many legal and accounting operations to win subsidies for small and medium-sized businesses and he deprived the small firms of this money. “I cannot trust his slogan ‘I don’t lie and steal’ anymore,” she said.
The Capi hnizdo firm belonged to Babis’s Agrofert Holding. Afterwards, its stake was transferred to bearer shares for a small firm to reach the 50-million-crown EU subsidy, which a firm that was part of the huge holding could never get. Later it again returned to Agrofert. The case has been investigated by the Czech police and the EU’s anti-fraud office OLAF.
If Zelienkova had a different opinion than the others, she felt more and more put down and later snapped at and even humiliated by her colleagues from the ANO district branch, she said.
She left the town council of Beroun, central Bohemia, in April already when she changed her permanent address.
Zelienkova said she believes the heads of the ANO district branch founded local branches against the regulations, produced false written records from meetings and approved candidates without convoking the necessary meetings.
Babis said previously Zelienkova’s departure from ANO does not surprise him as she had very different views of migration than the party.
Last year, Zelienkova criticised the government for making only negative statements about the migrant crisis, and for failing to present enough positive proposals and be ready to make compromises.
Zelienkova said she would give up her seat of an MP only if those who violated ANO rules and its moral code and who suppressed discussion also resigned from their posts.
ANO lower house group’s chairman Jaroslav Faltynek said it would be fair if Zelienkova gave up her mandate. “But given her close relations to (the right-wing opposition party) TOP 09, it cannot be expected from her,” he told the website of daily Mlada fronta Dnes.
“Unfortunately, I presumed that she would leave our movement and attack it,” Faltynek said.
He said Zelienkova had a problem with respecting opposite views and liked to oppose the majority.
She said she would keep supporting the government policy in issues that are in accordance with the original ideas of ANO.
Even without Zelienkova, the centre-left government of the Social Democrats (CSSD), ANO and the small Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) would have a comfortable majority of 111 votes in the 200-seat lower house.
