Vysoke Myto, East Bohemia, Aug 30 (CTK) – Entrepreneur and former village mayor Vladimir Bostik announced his candidacy for Czech president on Wednesday and said he has gathered more than 50,000 people’s signatures that are required for a candidate to be registered in the presidential race due in January.
Bostik is the fourth candidate to have gathered enough signatures, after the incumbent president, Milos Zeman, former Sciences Academy chairman Jiri Drahos and lyricist and entrepreneur Michal Horacek.
Bostik said he has 63,242 signatures for the time being.
“I have no team to organise my campaign. I have only been helped by more than 1,000 volunteers,” he told media.
Bostik said his decision to run for president was motivated by his dissatisfaction with the situation in the country and with the legal order.
If elected president, he would initiate a referendum on Czech Republic’s remaining in the EU, and introduce a direct election of town mayors. He is opposed to the acceptance of refugees, he said.
Bostik is critical of what he calls a mafia involving judges, police and distrainers.
He would restrict the financing of political parties and the Presidential Office.
Bostik, 57, a car mechanician by training who additionally completed secondary school studies, is a small tradesman who runs a road transportation firm. In connection with his previous enterprise, he has been repaying a debt of six million crowns.
He told journalists that a court found him guilty of oil theft some time ago and he is going to appeal the verdict.
In 2013, Bostik unsuccessfully ran in the general election for Tomio Okamura’s Dawn of Direct Democracy, a party which observers label as populist.
Senator Jaroslav Kubera (Civic Democrats, ODS) and the head of former PM Jiri Rusnok’s office, Karel Stogl, said their potential candidacy has been supported by at least 10 members of the upper house, which also makes them eligible for registration.
Another eight personalities have announced their plan to run in the two-round direct presidential election starting on January 12-13, 2018.
