Remisova: It Won't Be Easy for Czech Republic to Create Stable Gov't

Bratislava, October 22 (TASR) – The Czech Republic is the closest country to Slovakia, so it’s important for it to have a good and stable government, stated Opposition OLaNO MP Veronika Remisova in response to the outcome of the Czech general election that took place on Saturday (October 21).

Remisova said that it won’t be easy to create a stable government, as too many parties managed to win seats in the Czech Parliament, with three small parties barely reaching the 5-percent threshold required to gain seats.

“Before the election, much was said about the rise of extremist parties, so I’m glad that the number of legislators elected for extremist parties has actually dropped, only a certain number of votes has shifted from the far left to the far right,” she said. Remisova went on to say that both ideologies have shown in the past that they bring a great deal of evil to people, so the Slovak MP is glad that neither the far-left, nor the far-right parties gained many votes in the Czech election.

Opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) leader Richard Sulik congratulated the winner of the Czech election Andrej Babis on the election result. “It’s too soon for any further thoughts until a government is set up,” said Sulik in this regard.

According to SaS teamleader for foreign policy Martin Klus, it will probably be a rather complicated process. “We want the Czech Republic to remain our stable and predictable partner in both the EU and the V4 [Visegrad Four] group,” said Klus.

Meanwhile, the coalition Most-Hid party welcomes the fact that pro-European parties KDU-CSL (5.8 percent of the votes) and TOP 09 (5.31 percent) have managed to win seats in the Czech Parliament following the general election.

According to Most-Hid leader Bela Bugar, these two parties have managed to gain seats in the lower chamber of the Czech Parliament despite a difficult battle against various populist and anti-system political entities.

“A lot of work awaits them in order to defend the further pro-European direction of the Czech Republic. I wish them luck in this job,” Bugar wrote on Facebook.

Billionaire of Slovak origin Andrej Babis and his centrist movement ANO (Yes) won the Czech general elections on Saturday (October 21) with 29.64 percent of the votes – nearly three times the number gained by its closest rival. As many as nine political entities in total managed to reach the 5-percent threshold required to join the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies (the lower chamber of the Czech Parliament). The voter turnout was 60.84 percent.