President Petr Pavel will today meet the first three ministerial candidates from the future government of ANO, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and the Motorists, according to the schedule for the first day of consultations published on the Presidential Office’s website yesterday.
At 10am, Pavel will receive Robert Plaga, who should return to the Education Ministry as ANO’s nominee, and an hour later, Adam Vojtech, who should again lead the Health Ministry for ANO. At noon, the president will meet Andrej Babis’s nominee for Justice Minister, former Social Democrat Jeronym Tejc.
On Wednesday, ANO leader and likely next prime minister Babis presented Pavel with a list of all the candidates for ministers. He also announced that the president would start informal consultations with the nominees today. The Presidential Office subsequently added that the consultations could last until 10 December.
According to the Presidential Office, Pavel is ready to appoint Babis as prime minister within a week after he discloses his plans to resolve his conflict of interest over the ownership of Agrofert, and then appoint the government as a whole within a few days. “The date of the announcement is entirely in the hands of Andrej Babis,” the office said on Wednesday.
In addition to Plaga and Vojtech, Alena Schillerova is due to return to the finance ministry, Karel Havlicek as the industry and trade minister, and Lubomir Metnar to the Interior Ministry. In addition to Tejc, the newcomers in the government will include MPs Ales Juchelka as labour minister and Zuzana Schwarz Bartipanova as regional development minister.
The Motorists submitted the same names that had been originally speculated, but in an attempt to address the president’s concerns about controversial MP Filip Turek, they nominated their leader Petr Macinka as foreign minister, and Turek as environment minister, in the reverse of their original plans.
Pavel reiterated to Babis on Wednesday that his reservations about Turek as a member of the government persisted, according to a statement from the Presidential Office. Babis told reporters on Wednesday that the head of state had a problem with Turek’s nomination for legal reasons.
Turek has faced strong criticism for controversial racist or homophobic posts on social media. He has apologised for the criticised statements and denied authorship of some of them.
Motorists’ candidate Oto Klempir is to be the minister in charge of culture, while the chair of the Motorists deputy group, Boris Stastny, is to be in charge of sport in the new government.
SPD have nominated the former deputy chief of the general staff, Jaromir Zuna, as defence minister, the former head of the State Agricultural Intervention Fund, Martin Sebestyan, as agriculture minister and the former head of Czech Railways, Ivan Bednarik, as transport minister.
