Czech government will not withdraw public media bill after Letná rally

Czech governing politicians said after a mass rally at Letná that they will not change their plans to overhaul how Czech Television and Czech Radio are funded. Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO) insists that nobody wants to subordinate public media or nationalize them, while SPD chairman Tomio Okamura promised that the bill will not be withdrawn.

Babiš: the system is outdated

“The funding system is changing, nobody wants to control public media, nobody wants to tell them what to say and do, nobody wants to nationalize them. We are doing this because the system is outdated, and most of Europe is going the same way today, with others joining,” Babiš said of the intention to change the funding of Czech Television and Czech Radio. Okamura and Petr Macinka, leader of the Motoristé movement, responded in a similar vein.

Okamura: the protesters do not represent the majority

“Most people who want the fees abolished logically do not go to demonstrations, because they agree. We will not withdraw the proposal under any circumstances, and we will abolish the fees,” Okamura said on Sunday afternoon. He said he will not be pushed into betraying what he promised voters. He described those gathered in Prague as representing a minority view and pointed to a poll by the STEM/MARK agency for Czech Television: 23% of respondents support the government’s current plan to scrap the fees, 31% agree with moving funding into the state budget while keeping independence, and 34% said they oppose abolishing the fees.

Macinka also does not plan to change anything in his policy. He disputed the concerns of the organizers and the opposition that the government is threatening the independence of public media: “That is not true.” Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Karel Havlíček (ANO) wrote on the social network X that he fully respects the right to demonstrate, but that the majority of the Chamber of Deputies, elected in free elections, also has the right to carry out its election program. “That is exactly why I went to demonstrations in the late 1980s,” he added.

The opposition came to Letná in person

Opposing views came from the opposition on Sunday. Many of its representatives went to Letná in person, for example Piráti parliamentary group chair Olga Richterová, STAN leader Vít Rakušan and ODS leader Martin Kupka. “For Czech Television and Czech Radio at Letná! But also against the government trampling everything that comes its way,” Kupka wrote on Facebook. “We do not want to live in a dysfunctional and plundered country. We do not want to go the Slovak way. That is why we are at Letná!” Richterová added.

Crowds gathered on the Letná plain to protest against the current cabinet’s policies. The main theme was the government’s plan to abolish the fees for Czech Television and Czech Radio and hand their funding to the state. The organizers presented the “4:36” appeal with demands to the governing majority: withdraw the bill on television and radio or start a genuine dialogue, drop the style in which the media law was pushed through its first reading in the Chamber of Deputies, and remove Okamura as speaker of the lower house.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz