ANO, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and the Motorists are now focusing on discussing their coalition agreement and the programme for their prospective government, and will return to the cabinet lineup in about four or six weeks, said ANO leader Andrej Babis in a video on Facebook today.
“We have completed the division of ministries, the division of the Chamber of Deputies. Now we are concentrating on discussing the programme, which will take the most time, and the coalition agreement,” said Babis, the probable next prime minister.
He noted that President Petr Pavel said last week that the next cabinet should not be formed hastily. “As for the personnel issues, we’ll come back to that in maybe a month or a month and a half,” he said.
Babis briefly referred to his talks on Monday with the Motorists, who told him what steps they were going to take in response to allegations of controversial statements on social networks by Motorist MP Filip Turek, who the party is pushing as the next foreign minister.
He said the Motorists rejected the various accusations. “It’s up to them to convince the public that it’s not so,” he said.
According to Denik N, Turek repeatedly published openly racist, sexist or homophobic statements on social media in the past, as well as numerous references to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Turek said on Monday that he had posted “a lot of crap” on social media for the purposes of black humour, for which he “might have slapped” his younger self.
The Motorists later announced that they had filed a criminal complaint against Denik N and the authors of the article. Denik N previously stated that it stood by the article and believed the police would investigate all the circumstances of the case.
Under an agreement reached on Friday, ANO is to have nine seats in the new cabinet, including the prime minister, SPD is to have three seats, and the Motorists four. On Monday, Motorists leader Petr Macinka and ANO deputy leader Karel Havlicek confirmed that this agreement was valid.
