Řeporyje, Prague: Pavel Novotný may not return as mayor after vote

In the Prague district of Řeporyje, a fight for a council majority has begun after the election: Pavel Novotný of ODS, the former mayor, may not get the post back for now. The group backed by KDU-ČSL, STAN and the Pirates won 7 of 15 seats, while the local Civic Democrats have just 5.

Who will decide the outcome of the talks

The Řeporyje council has 15 seats this year. Both camps are now looking for allies among the rest: TOP 09 won two seats and ANO one. If both parties join ODS, that coalition would have 8 votes, a one-vote edge over “Friendly Řeporyje”.

Nobody involved wants to show their cards in public. Novotný told the news site Novinky that the election winner had expected to take most of the seats and built its campaign around that, “the toughest one I can remember”. According to him, it will become clear later what concessions those wanting to join a coalition were ready to make. The leader of “Friendly Řeporyje”, non-party STAN candidate Martin Palkovský, only asked people to understand that this is not the time for comments.

Even before the election, Palkovský made it clear that his idea of political culture and of how the district office should work is quite different from that of the current coalition: he said that one cannot “normalize breaking the law, mockery, lies and slander”.

A tough campaign and a criminal record

The campaign in the district was indeed sharp. Some local residents spoke out harshly against ODS, for example by tearing down the party’s campaign flyers. ODS supporters object that the flyers were often hung outside designated advertising spaces, for instance on a sculpture installation or on the facades of residential buildings.

Some voters also dislike Novotný’s criminal past. Last summer he spent three months in prison after resigning as district mayor himself. In 2022 he received a suspended sentence for disorderly conduct, incitement to a crime and dangerous stalking of businessman Marek Vít.

What the court held against him

According to the verdict, the former mayor committed 17 offenses, seven of them after the court had extended his probation. They include insults that the court declined to repeat, possession of narcotic substances and an entry about “immeasurable alcohol” in his driving record.

Last May, the Prague 5 District Court converted the suspended sentence of the current ODS candidate list leader into three months in prison. Novotný served most of that term last summer in a prison in Liberec and took a prison T-shirt home as a souvenir.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz