ODS accuses former party colleague Kuba of colluding with SPD minister over Budvar board seat

Last Wednesday, South Bohemian Region Governor and leader of the "Our Czechia" movement Martin Kuba became a member of the supervisory board of the state-owned Budějovický Budvar brewery. The appointment was made by the Minister of Agriculture from the SPD party, sparking sharp criticism from Kuba's former colleagues at ODS.

"Congratulations to Martin Kuba on his new position, which he arranged directly with the SPD minister. Understandable — friends should help each other! And if there's no money for roads for ordinary people, at least someone gets a little something," ODS wrote on its Facebook account.

Kuba called the criticism from his former party "partly absurd." "I understand I'm supposed to be criticized for everything now, but until recently this Budvar supervisory board included ODS's own campaign manager," he told the news outlet Novinky, referring to the Civic Democrats' longtime chief manager Jan Kočí, whose term on the board is now expiring. However, Kočí was actually appointed to that post in June 2022 not by an SPD minister, but by the then-head of the agriculture ministry, Zdeněk Nekula of KDU-ČSL.

"If someone had asked me back then, as governor and an ODS member, why a campaign manager who doesn't even live in the region and has no particular connection to the region or to agriculture ended up there, I probably wouldn't have had an answer," Kuba remarked, adding that he'd be curious to know what motivated that appointment.

The governor explained his own appointment to the board primarily by pointing to a major investment currently underway at the brewery — the expansion of its visitor center. The project will form part of the European Capital of Culture program, a status České Budějovice will hold in 2028. According to Kuba, the new complex area needs to be linked with cycling paths and city infrastructure, and it is precisely this coordination he intends to oversee through his role on the supervisory board.

A new ally for Babiš?

According to Michal Malý, a political scientist at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University, Kuba is competing with ODS for the same pool of voters, while ODS's own ratings have been slipping in recent polls. "So distancing itself from Kuba makes perfect sense for ODS," the expert believes.

He notes that the governor has spent several months trying to shake off the label of being an "ANO offshoot project," but his appointment to the supervisory board pulls him right back into that image. Seats on the boards of companies like Budvar are typically divided up among nationwide parliamentary parties — the ruling coalition usually holds the chairmanship, while other seats go to other parties.

"And suddenly we have the case of the South Bohemian governor, who doesn't yet have a nationwide party. Why give a post to someone who belongs to neither the government coalition nor an opposition alliance?" the political scientist asks. He also pointed out that Kuba received the position specifically from an SPD minister — and saw in this a hint about the possible future of the "Our Czechia" movement.

"A new coalition partner is growing for Babiš's government, one that's gathering up disaffected voters from both the coalition and the opposition. I get the impression that Andrej Babiš is cultivating himself a new coalition ally. He's just doing it a bit too openly," Malý added.

The expert also found it unusual that the governor himself did not publicly announce his appointment — it only became known thanks to journalists. "I can imagine he didn't want anyone to notice at all. As governor, he sits on a whole series of other supervisory and management boards, and he probably hoped this news would simply go unnoticed — that it wasn't important information," Malý explained.

Kuba left ODS last year and founded his own political movement, "Our Czechia." For his membership on the Budvar supervisory board, he is entitled to a payment of 11,000 crowns a month. According to him, he will direct this money to a charitable foundation that has for many years supported single mothers and talented children from South Bohemia.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz