The first round of the elections is scheduled for 13-14 January. Photo credit: Zdenek Kolarik / MMB.
Prague, Nov 30 (CTK) – The Czech Statistical Office (CSU) has released basic information about the nine presidential candidates whose bids were formally registered by the Interior Ministry on Friday, CSU spokesman Jan Cieslar told CTK yesterday. The information can be found on the CSU’s election website.
Cieslar said information about further candidates would be added if the Supreme Administrative Court grants their appeals against the ministry’s rejection of their bids.
Yesterday, the Supreme Administrative Court received the first two such appeals. The deadline for submitting appeals with the court is this afternoon.
The oldest of the nine candidates for the mid-January elections is Jaroslav Basta, a sitting deputy for the far-right opposition party Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD). He will be 74 when the elections are held. The youngest is former Mendel University rector Danuse Nerudova, 44.
Nerudova and former army general Petr Pavel are the only two candidates seeking the presidency with the support of ordinary citizens. The bids of the other candidates were supported by signatures from members of parliament.
Five of the candidates have permanent residence in Prague. Of the other four, ex-Prime Minister Andrej Babis lives in Pruhonice, a town close to Prague, Pavel lives in Cernoucek, near Roudnice nad Labem in the Usti nad Labem region, and Nerudova in Kurim, near Brno. Denisa Rohanova, who heads an association helping debtors, lives in Kralupy nad Vltavou, central Bohemia.
Six of the nine candidates are not members of any political party. Aside from Babis (ANO) and Basta (SPD), the other member of a political party is senator Marek Hilser, who in 2018, after an unsuccessful bid in the previous presidential election, established the Marek Hilser for Senate movement, of which he is the leader. In the upper house he is a member of the Mayors and Independents’ (STAN) group.
