Pavel rides motorcycle to Morocco, missing Czech elections

Czech President Petr Pavel set off on a private motorcycle expedition through the Moroccan desert on the very days the country was holding local elections, even though advisers in his circle had repeatedly warned him in advance that the trip would coincide with the vote and provoke a negative public reaction.

The president's team pointed out to Pavel that combining his holiday with the elections would inevitably become a subject of public debate, and urged him to reconsider his departure. Pavel refused and went ahead with his “expedition motorcycle journey” into the Moroccan desert. Prague Castle explains the move as “a planning error that the president regrets” — and First Lady Eva Pavlová defends her husband in much the same way.

“For the first time, the state has rigidly fixed the date of local elections directly in law. At the same time, it has done nothing to let people vote more flexibly — not only from abroad, but also from elsewhere in Czechia, wherever they happen to be working, studying or spending time,” she said in her husband's defence.

The law that wrecked his plans

Pavlová and the president's team point out that this year, for the first time, the head of state could not simply pick a convenient date for the local elections himself. Under an amendment to the constitutional law, Senate or municipal elections must now be held strictly on the Friday and Saturday at the end of the first full week of October.

The president planned the trip back at the end of last year, before the law had taken effect. According to his team, Pavel was counting on the elections falling at the end of September, even though it had been known since 2024, when the law was passed, that the new rule would apply. Once the “clash” was discovered, the team repeatedly asked the president to postpone the trip, but Pavel refused, saying he was ready to bear the consequences of his decision.

Three years under pressure

People close to the president say this trip matters especially to Pavel, who has had a difficult year behind him. Sources recall tense relations with the government: clashes with Foreign Minister Petr Macinka over the appointment of Motoristé MP Filip Turek, who was never made a minister, as well as laws unwelcome to the president that he vetoed. The head of state also expects the pressure from Andrej Babiš's cabinet to continue unabated.

That is why, according to sources, the president feels he has earned some leniency from his supporters. “He sees it this way: if he has been ‘standing in the wind’ for three years and pulls off ‘such a boyish stunt’, those who have backed him will still stay on his side,” one source described the situation.

Symbolic gesture and the first lady's silence

In the debate over how symbolically important the president's participation in the elections really is, one argument raised was that this year no senator is being elected in Černoušek, the small village where there are only two candidate lists — and where, in any case, the presidential couple has not actually lived for three years.

The president's team admits that his failure to vote is a political mistake. Some advisers are still trying to persuade Pavel to cut the trip short and return to vote. Others are gradually giving up on the idea: it is logistically difficult, and it would no longer help his damaged reputation anyway. The situation is complicated further by the fact that it is hard to reach the president — he is out in the desert. At the Castle, officials hope the mistake will not seriously affect the overall assessment of his work.

It remains an open question whether the first lady herself will take part in this year's local elections — since her husband cannot vote, it would seem logical for her to pick up the “baton”. Asked whether Eva Pavlová intends to come to the polls, her spokesman Petr Fučík gave no direct answer. The Castle could not even answer the simple question of whether Pavlová is currently in Czechia — although, according to available information, the president's wife is not accompanying him on this private trip.

Source: seznamzpravy.cz