Prague, Feb 26 (CTK) – The Czech ANO movement deputies’ group head Jaroslav Faltynek was re-elected ANO first deputy chairman at ANO’s national congress on Sunday, gaining support of 142 of the 210 delegates present and beating Central Bohemia Region Governor Jaroslava Pokorna Jermanova in a secret ballot.
Fifty-nine delegates voted for Pokorna Jermanova.
Faltynek thanked all delegates, including his rival candidate, for support.
He said he believes that ANO will win the October general election as comfortably as to be able to form a government with a single coalition partner.
In the present centre-left cabinet, ANO’s partners are the Social Democrats (CSSD) and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL).
Faltynek said he would like more businesspeople to run for ANO in the elections.
ANO, led by Finance Minister Andrej Babis, is widely considered a hot election favourite, based on public opinion polls’ results.
Babis told journalists that he wants ANO to gain more than 21 percent of the vote, which it achieved in last year’s regional elections.
The goal is that ANO does not end in opposition, as was the case in some regions last year, in spite of its election victory, Babis said.
Faltynek, 54, an agronomist by training, has been a deputy since 2013, when ANO, then a new political movement, entered the Chamber of Deputies for the first time.
He heads the ANO deputies’ group and the Chamber’s agricultural committee.
Faltynek was a member of numerous business companies’ bodies in the past. Since 2001, he has held managerial posts in Agrofert, Babis’s giant chemical and food processing holding, which he recently transferred to trust funds in reaction to a new conflict of interest law.
Faltynek joined ANO as one of its founding members in 2012.
Before, in 1995-2012, he was a member of the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD), which it represented in the Prostejov Town Council and the Olomouc Regional Assembly.
He was first elected ANO deputy chairman in August 2012 but he failed to defend the post at the party congress in March 2013. Babis then stood up in his support and the delegates elected Faltynek as a member of the ANO eight-member broader leadership.
He was elected ANO first deputy chairman at the congress in 2015.
