ANO, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), and the Motorists are currently discussing the allocation of ministries, ANO leader Andrej Babis told journalists today, adding that SPD will be represented by experts and the Motorists by politicians.
“We’re still negotiating, we’re still calling each other, so we’ll see,” said Babis. “Now we are dealing with the number of ministries, we are dealing with committees, our group [of newly elected ANO MPs] will meet tomorrow. Our potential partners are dealing with it too.”
Babis, whose ANO movement won the weekend parliamentary elections by a wide margin, declined to give any concrete information on the representation of the three parties in the government.
ANO has 80 MPs, SPD has 15 MPs, and the Motorists have 13 MPs in the new parliament, which has its first meeting on 3 November. The three parties will hold a majority in the new 200-seat lower house.
Babis, who was prime minister previously in 2017-2021, said he considers SPD’s strategy as positive because practitioners from a given field would know what is going on there.
He refused to comment on the statement of Motorists MP Filip Turek that he would probably be the next foreign minister.
Turek also said that Motorists leader Petr Macinka would be a “wonderful environment minister”. In response, representatives of environmental organisations said that putting the Motorists in charge of this ministry would be unacceptable as it would threaten environment protection and human health.
“Of course we communicate with these organisations and the environment is very important to us,” said Babis.
He did not yet confirm whether some ministries would be merged in the new government, as was mentioned by ANO during the election campaign.
“At the moment, it seems there will be a minister in the Ministry of Regional Development,” he said, referring to one of the ministries that were mentioned as candidates to be merged.
